TGIF! Here’s your development news round-up for the past week! Player Bans October 11 - October 17 As a reminder, the following numbers are permanently frozen accounts, and don't count temporary freezes. FB: 18 Kong/Armor: 204 The majority of permanently frozen accounts are frozen for being a shared or alternate account. This is something we actively investigate, and we appreciate players reporting suspicious accounts to us. If you have any questions or comments about a frozen account, please direct them through Support as the Forums are not the place to discuss account freezes, because of the sensitive account information involved. New Limited Items! A new week means new Limited Items! Here’s what’s up for grabs (tomorrow!): October Midweek Calendar! The October Midweek Calendar is starts next Monday at 10:00 am PDT and wraps up on October 31 at 10:00 pm PDT. Prepare to be spooked! Support Report with your favorite burrowing nocturnal mammal and Answerpreneur, Aardvark! Happy weekend, players! This week we've had a lot of tickets from players who are feeling frustrated by frequent combative actions. You are probably familiar with it, but for anyone who is not, griefing is a general term for when a player is targeted with heavy numbers of battle actions. Griefing is pretty normal in games where players are highly competitive or when someone has a bone to pick. Within the limits of our games, griefing alone is not considered abusive and we don't take action on player's accounts simply for heavy attacking. However, we do recognize that sustained griefing can get a little old for the person on the receiving end. This is why our games include a variety of mechanics that help limit aggressive actions in certain scenarios. There is also a Protection http://support.kanoapps.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/91/3/lcn---protection feature that allows temporary blocking of someone who has passed certain action thresholds. We also know that some players are not fans of Protection or the other game mechanics designed to shield lower levels and less aggressive players. The current system is designed to strike a balance that allows the vast majority of our community to play and have fun. Cheers, Aardvark who doesn't get why some people like candy corn, but is happy to donate any that comes her way. Terrible Joke of the Week No lame joke this week, but enjoy this humorous comic strip! http://frenums.tumblr.com/post/62532797481 That's it for TGIF this week, everybody! Thanks for reading, and have an excellent weekend! Play Now! Facebook Canvas:https://apps.facebook.com/la_cosa_nostra/?fb_source=appcenter&fb_appcenter=1 Facebook Connect: http://www.kanoplay.com/la_cosa_nostra?game_server=server_1 Kano Play Server 2: http://www.kanoplay.com/la_cosa_nostra?game_server=server_2 Kongregate: http://www.kongregate.com/games/kanoapps/mob-wars-la-cosa-nostra Armor Games: http://armorgames.com/play/14870/mob-wars-la-cosa-nostra
Some thoughts: 204 bans on a network? Wow, what was going on there? Puhleez! If you are "griefed" or need "protection", you should probably be playing Mario Brothers or something else. I have been chainlisted on a regular basis for over 3 years, and I'm still playing. Very disappointed that there is no joke of the week. I SOOOOO look forward to those...
I agree I missed the joke also, but I must admit that the comic strip was really humerus. Have a great weekend everyone!
No joke of the week? Awww man. Surprised there wasn't a small section dedicated to feedback on the new BA. I personally found it alright, you guys could have made it more clear what revealing your identity entailed as there was plenty of confusion of to when your identity would be revealed! Other than that, having only 'Mobsters' seemed to level the playing fields by not allowing certain people to skew the BA final rewards which is imho a great result!
While it's true that we don't list exactly what we ban people for and most of them are alt accounts, it's untrue to say that we never ban cheaters. There were 204 bans over the last week, my money is on some percentage of that being bot users.
@mi7ch Would there be anyway you could gather a distribution of the reasons why these accounts were banned? I think that really would provide an interesting graphic for both you as moderators/devs and for the players. Particularly as it'll help quiet some of the people that say, 'You deal with people cheating x way but not those cheating y way.' My 2 cents of course
Can't say it's easy to catch those who use bots either. I know players who attack 4-10x per second, seems impossible but to prove it is another thing. I even took screen shots, the best way IMO is to take action on the sites providing the software. Not many player know how to make their own so it would cut down on a good percentage. Another thing I notice is that it's not usually just one player that is using a bot/script its a whole syndicate. What could be a possibility is to monitor action during synd wars, You will notice that certain synds can go from 20th place to 1st in less than a hour. They also seem to get credits for kills they do not actually get. Maybe the team can check to verify that only 1 kill is awarded to the family for the kill not 2+ credited. Of course no one will report their own synd for this so it's not too easy to catch on. There is also sites that show a synds health so they can pick and choose the lowest health. I have sent in these sites to support.
Is it true that if a player gets caught running a bot/script you won't ban them more than a week if they pay into the game? I heard from a few people on kong that it's allowed if you put money into the game. Seems a little stupid to treat others different.
On kong we have some big spenders that use scripts/bots heavily to level. This is not taken action upon, so now the number of players doing this is increased. Around 1/3 of the top 30 players use these tools on a daily basis which is resulting in less spending by other players as well as more high leveled players leaving the game
I could care less about this. I play my own game, knowing that there are others that if they are not actually cheating, use the loopholes in the game mechanics to their advantage. It's sad that there are those that need to do so in order to be a "top" player, but I know who they are and simply ignore them (or aggravate them from time to time). I have seen plenty of players, ones I like and ones I don't like, leave partially due to these actions. But I have been playing long enough to know that these players will usually get bored after a while and move on to something else.
It seems perfectly legit to get 2 kills at the same time, it has happened to me and someone in my syndicate. I'm not botting and the others in my syndicate don't appear to be either (AFAIK). My theory is that if you hit at the same time at the end, the system can't decide who was first and both get the kill. This mechanism does seem to benefit botters more than legit players, though.
We call it 'double kill' over at my syndicate. No botters here as well. Also, I want to point out that the main killer gets most of the WP, while the assist get like 70% of the WP amount for a kill. IMO it's a cool solution. Although it can easily be abused by botters...
Sw main problem is alts, not bots or scripts. But in the main game and BA the scripts and bots are the problem
Fights Won:163,269 Fights Lost:47,574 Joined 211 days ago Doesn't look legit to me considering he is weak for his level and if he was using a levelling partner his win/loss ratio would be much closer than 4:1. My guess is that there is 1 or several alts out there totalling 100,000 fight losses
