Fix for boosting issue - restoring instant quit replays

[Manolis109]

  The past months ,several players have been deceiving the community by winning solo medals and reaching high ranking by boosting themselves using alt accounts or having others boost them. As a result, individual medals are losing their value and players become demotivated, competition is being destroyed. I believe the only possible way to deal with this is to make all Replays visible, including instant quit Replays so that the players who boost will be exposed at least. In that way they will probably stop boosting since the community will acknowledge that those players are ethically cheating. Please spend a few minutes/ seconds on the poll, your opinion matters a lot and can determine whether boosting will be prevented, and how soon this will be. The sooner, the better.

I believe that since it has been several months already that competition is being harmed and most solo weekly wins are a lie, its high time action was taken, **as soon as possible** , so that the game will become a little better. The more making the game better by fixing any competition issues is delayed, the more pointless fixing it in the future becomes since more and more damage is being caused, damage that can not be eraised. 

Thank you for your time.

@Alexander please visit this topic from time to time to see the results.

Edited February 22 by Manolis109 (see edit history)

[Samnita]

Yes, it must be added

[trophy435]

top ladder integrity died a long time ago, and this wont revive it in the slightest

[iDaniRF]

first  start with the hackers which is the big mess, but if this option would unmask many "Pro" players 

is a good option! 

[Manolis109]

@Alexander we are all greatful for the banwave. I hope that all top ranks cheaters were caught. However Cheaters are not the only ones who grief the arena. Boosting does too. Please check the leaderboard in the end of every season, even right now. Unless something is done about boosting, manipulative arena won't really change.

[CleverName]

How does showing replays change boosting? Boosters will still either insta quit or just played intentionally lost matches. Fundamental issue is that arena lacks many players at any given time, which allows boosting to occur.

Additionally, replays won't help much - then you're going to start accusing insta quitters who have an easy loss of boosting. As the #1 player who gets insta quit against, you'll see how many "boosters" I have for example. To play more devil's advocate, if someone wanted to look "legit" for this - they would just play a counter that loses against the main account, thereby justifying an insta quit. These days most boosters boost a little here and there, so I don't think it'll be as easy to detect as you might think. 

And to play devil's advocate more - everyone in top ranks knows who manipulates arena hardest and their style of it. This isn't an individual players issue; more of a clan issue imo. You talk of solo medals but completely forget about clan medals - who you can argue get hit more often and consistently by boosted clan results. 

Thankfully with the most recent ban wave, I think boosting will calm down, but time will tell...And to give some perspective, boosting affects maybe 0.0001% of SM players.

TLDR: Boosting isn't a big issue. But the fix (if we wanted to pursue) would be to increase # of players in arena, not replays.

Edited February 24 by CleverName (see edit history)

[Manolis109]

21 minutes ago, CleverName said:

How does showing replays change boosting? Boosters will still either insta quit or just played intentionally lost matches. Fundamental issue is that arena lacks many players at any given time, which allows boosting to occur.

Additionally, replays won't help much - then you're going to start accusing insta quitters who have an easy loss of boosting. As the #1 player who gets insta quit against, you'll see how many "boosters" I have for example. To play more devil's advocate, if someone wanted to look "legit" for this - they would just play a counter that loses against the main account, thereby justifying an insta quit. These days most boosters boost a little here and there, so I don't think it'll be as easy to detect as you might think. 

And to play devil's advocate more - everyone in top ranks knows who manipulates arena hardest and their style of it. This isn't an individual players issue; more of a clan issue imo. You talk of solo medals but completely forget about clan medals - who you can argue get hit more often and consistently by boosted clan results. 

Thankfully with the most recent ban wave, I think boosting will calm down, but time will tell...

TLDR: Boosting isn't a big issue. But the fix (if we wanted to pursue) would be to increase # of players in arena, not replays.

If Replays were restored, simply everyone could see the continuous insta quits from the same accounts everytime on a player's replays. Therefore it would be ethically wrong for the player to continue boosting.

YES boosting IS a big issue as long as players fail to reach top 3 bc other accounts with no repetitions have taken their place. I can't bring examples can I?

Lets be real it will be obvious whether the instant quitters who quit bc they will lose are boosters or not. If you have like 5+ Replays in a row with the same player it will obviously be boosting

Edited February 24 by Manolis109 (see edit history)

[Tirreggregars]

14 minutes ago, CleverName said:

How does showing replays change boosting? Boosters will still either insta quit or just played intentionally lost matches. Fundamental issue is that arena lacks many players at any given time, which allows boosting to occur.

Additionally, replays won't help much - then you're going to start accusing insta quitters who have an easy loss of boosting. As the #1 player who gets insta quit against, you'll see how many "boosters" I have for example. To play more devil's advocate, if someone wanted to look "legit" for this - they would just play a counter that loses against the main account, thereby justifying an insta quit. These days most boosters boost a little here and there, so I don't think it'll be as easy to detect as you might think. 

And to play devil's advocate more - everyone in top ranks knows who manipulates arena hardest and their style of it. This isn't an individual players issue; more of a clan issue imo. You talk of solo medals but completely forget about clan medals - who you can argue get hit more often and consistently by boosted clan results. 

Thankfully with the most recent ban wave, I think boosting will calm down, but time will tell...

TLDR: Boosting isn't a big issue. But the fix (if we wanted to pursue) would be to increase # of players in arena, not replays.

Unfortunately, SM is not a game people would like. The player base is roughly at the value you'd expect a game such as this to have. What I mean is, it is a 2D, turn based, slow progressing game, that has old graphics, little features, little satisfaction, no new F2P player can get into rank 1 basically, and overall it is just not fast and cool and well-made enough to be a game that the youth of today would play. I, for example, came across this game since it wasn't banned on school computers, I don't play any other video games, but when I came across this again it had nice memories so I found it enjoyable.

 

It is completely possible to make this game viable again, but it would need a complete rework, form an old 2010 style game to a 202 style game, as well as money into advertising, which I believe Gato does not have. And besides, making the whole game 3d, reworking it into a fighting game, making it compatible on consoles and creating a better AI for farming are all huge and very time consuming things, that need to happen for the player base to increase to a significant amount.

[CleverName]

8 minutes ago, Manolis109 said:

If Replays were restored, simply everyone could see the continuous insta quits from the same accounts everytime on a player's replays. Therefore it would be ethically wrong for the player to continue boosting.

1) How would you know who is boosting vs. an innocent player quitting? (How would you tell if someone intentionally threw a match vs played it out legit?)

2) Replays disappear over time / sometimes don't show up at all. How would you track that? What about someone who boosts 1 in every 10 matches between a few accounts? Or the dedicated booster who plays friendly non-ranked 1v1s to clear replay history?

3) Don't you think an "ethical" player will just claim these accounts aren't his/hers? Basically claim that they are people he/she plays against (there's really not many top players...) and know they will lose, so they quit? 

4) To troll an enemy clan, you can just always insta quit against them and accuse them of boosting and ruin their reputation...What's your fix for that? Many people know they will lose matches before turn 1, so this way they can punish enemies lol...?

Edited February 24 by CleverName (see edit history)

[Manolis109]

3 minutes ago, CleverName said:

1) How would you know who is boosting vs. an innocent player quitting?

2) Replays disappear over time / sometimes don't show up at all. How would you track that? What about someone who boosts 1 in every 10 matches between a few accounts? Or the dedicated booster who plays friendly non-ranked 1v1s to clear replay history?

3) Don't you think an "ethical" player will just claim these accounts aren't his/hers? Basically claim that they are people he/she plays against (there's really not many top players...) and know they will lose, so they quit? 

4) To troll an enemy clan, you can just always insta quit against them and accuse them of boosting and ruin their reputation...What's your fix for that? Many people know they will lose matches before turn 1, so this way they can punish enemies lol...?

check the edits on my message

[CleverName]

Just now, Manolis109 said:

check the edits on my message

yes thanks - I'll be waiting for replies to the above questions... this is just gonna be a witch hunt against anyone you want

[Tirreggregars]

5 minutes ago, CleverName said:

1) How would you know who is boosting vs. an innocent player quitting? (How would you tell if someone intentionally threw a match vs played it out legit?)

2) Replays disappear over time / sometimes don't show up at all. How would you track that? What about someone who boosts 1 in every 10 matches between a few accounts? Or the dedicated booster who plays friendly non-ranked 1v1s to clear replay history?

3) Don't you think an "ethical" player will just claim these accounts aren't his/hers? Basically claim that they are people he/she plays against (there's really not many top players...) and know they will lose, so they quit? 

4) To troll an enemy clan, you can just always insta quit against them and accuse them of boosting and ruin their reputation...What's your fix for that? Many people know they will lose matches before turn 1, so this way they can punish enemies lol...?

Yes, I agree, it is easily exploitable, but boosting is not a major problem, and people will boost anyways, the main thing would be for people to only have one account, sure you can open other accounts as long as they are unused. This would fix half the problem. Besides that, there is not much anyone can do.

[CleverName]

3 minutes ago, Tirreggregars said:

Yes, I agree, it is easily exploitable, but boosting is not a major problem, and people will boost anyways, the main thing would be for people to only have one account, sure you can open other accounts as long as they are unused. This would fix half the problem. Besides that, there is not much anyone can do.

Deleting alts isn't really an option and would be horrible for SM business. As people who care about pixels tend to be bigger spenders and have large community presence. 

And evening tracking who owns what account is near impossible (ie. how do you know someone owns it vs. co-pilots it vs. someone played then quit and gave it away). Then you add in VPNs, shared accounts, etc - and it's a real mess to figure out who's boosting who. At best, it would be an incredible manual task for Gato and super controversial. At worst, you just killed the top player base and lost revenue and morale in game. From a business mgmt perspective, it's not worth imo.

But like you said, there's maybe 15 people in the game who actually care about boosting (I personally used to, but realized it's not worth it). We have bigger fish to catch (exploiters are the priority for me, for example, along with balance changes).

Edited February 24 by CleverName (see edit history)

[Tirreggregars]

Making a huge player base would also be an option, but as I stated before, you would need teams of professional programmers, working full time for many weeks and months to make that happen, the game, in its current state, is unappealing to most anyone that isn't an OG. After all, most people here have been playing for at least a year, the community is small, everyone knows each other and it never changes, sure some people are added, for example I've been on forums for a year at most, @SawzAll is a also a recent addition, but it remains the same nevertheless.

[Manolis109]

it won't fix everything but it will be a big step closer to stopping boosting bc it will definitely prevent it. Do you have a problem with that? If a player is an ethical one then this change (making replays visible) can not harm them by any means

[Tirreggregars]

1 minute ago, CleverName said:

Deleting alts isn't really an option and would be horrible for SM business. As people who care about pixels tend to be bigger spenders and have large community presence. 

And evening tracking who owns what account is near impossible (ie. how do you know someone owns it vs. co-pilots it vs. someone played then quit and gave it away). Then you add in VPNs, shared accounts, etc - and it's a real mess to figure out who's boosting who. At best, it would be an incredible manual task for Gato and super controversial. At worst, you just killed the top player base and lost revenue and morale in game. From a business mgmt perspective, it's not worth imo.

Yes, it isn't but Gato should show that they stick behind their terms, and enforce their rules. Of course it is a huge loss, but either change their terms, or enforce them.

[Manolis109]

why are you getting so active towards the idea?

[CleverName]

2 minutes ago, Manolis109 said:

it won't fix everything but it will be a big step closer to stopping boosting bc it will definitely prevent it. Do you have a problem with that? If a player is an ethical one then this change (making replays visible) can not harm them by any means

Don't have problem with trying to stop boosting. But setting up a system where innocent players get accused is something I'll advocate against all day. Community has gotten too toxic in some areas - I see this as stirring that pot a bit. Showing replays doesn't solve boosting. Adding more players in the arena does.

1 minute ago, Manolis109 said:

why are you getting so active towards the idea?

Because it's a bad idea. (Well a good idea, but horrible execution and thinking out the solution)

Edited February 24 by CleverName (see edit history)

[Tirreggregars]

Just now, Manolis109 said:

it won't fix everything but it will be a big step closer to stopping boosting bc it will definitely prevent it. Do you have a problem with that? If a player is an ethical one then this change (making replays visible) can not harm them by any means

Yes, but it will harm Gato's servers, as @Alexander already mentioned, they are already working on making them more stable, but any huge strain could lose the data of thousands of players. So until then, clearing these insta-quit replays lowers the strain and is a price to pay.

11 minutes ago, CleverName said:

Don't have problem with trying to stop boosting. But setting up a system where innocent players get accused is something I'll advocate against all day. Community has gotten too toxic in some areas - I see this as stirring that pot a bit. Showing replays doesn't solve boosting. Adding more players in the arena does.

Because it's a bad idea. (Well a good idea, but horrible execution and thinking out the solution)

With the risk of sounding very repetitive, I repeat, your solution is a non-solution, Gato does not have the monetary capabilities to render this game appealing. It is one of those games that should have died along with Flash, it survived, but that gives you an idea of how old it is.

Either way, the basic fact that this community is so competitive over an old and dying game and is willing to boost and hack to win what, a couple of pixels, is ridiculous. 

[Manolis109]

30 minutes ago, Tirreggregars said:

Yes, but it will harm Gato's servers, as @Alexander already mentioned, they are already working on making them more stable, but any huge strain could lose the data of thousands of players. So until then, clearing these insta-quit replays lowers the strain and is a price

im talking about making Replays visible, not banning

[Tirreggregars]

2 minutes ago, Manolis109 said:

im talking about making Replays visible, not banning

Yes, but making the replays visible takes up server space, meaning it could crash the whole servers, as alex already said, they are volatile already and any strain could cause abhuge crash and wipe the data of thousands of palyers.

[Manolis109]

41 minutes ago, CleverName said:

Don't have problem with trying to stop boosting. But setting up a system where innocent players get accused is something I'll advocate against all day. Community has gotten too toxic in some areas - I see this as stirring that pot a bit. Showing replays doesn't solve boosting. Adding more players in the arena does.

• The insta quit matches do take place. the fact that first turn quits are invisible only hides these matches.

• its possible that innocent players get accused but wouldn't you advocate for a whole week against players winning solo medals unethically if you would advocate for innocent players all day? I say that bc, comparably, boosting is a lot more frequent and larger an issue than accusation of innocent players and misunderstandings.

Players getting accused would be very rare of anything, bc lets be real it will be obvious whether a player is quitting in despair or bc he intends to boost. It will mostly be obvious

2 minutes ago, Tirreggregars said:

Yes, but making the replays visible takes up server space, meaning it could crash the whole servers, as alex already said, they are volatile already and any strain could cause abhuge crash and wipe the data of thousands of palyers.

oh, wasn't aware of that.

[Tirreggregars]

12 minutes ago, Manolis109 said:

• The insta quit matches do take place. the fact that first turn quits are invisible only hides these matches.

• its possible that innocent players get accused but wouldn't you advocate for a whole week against players winning solo medals unethically if you would advocate for innocent players all day? I say that bc, comparably, boosting is a lot more frequent and larger an issue than accusation of innocent players and misunderstandings.

Players getting accused would be very rare of anything, bc lets be real it will be obvious whether a player is quitting in despair or bc he intends to boost. It will mostly be obvious

oh, wasn't aware of that.

Yes, I read it just today in the thread called Gato Games?

[ChooseGeno]

To be honest this might not even stop the "boosters" from doing what they do, I've seen cheaters publicly flex their bans on reddit so I'm not placing the ethic of these people too high.

[Lord Gorgon]

Wait, you mean to say that some "top players" would be artificially inflatung their scores?

How could the administration possibly allow such practices in what is suposed to be a competitive game?

 

Thanks in advance, Old kunt.