TGIF! Development News for February 16th, 2018

VPNs are an increasing need for cyber security in an age of increasing lack of privacy. Just like Rule 34 for works of art, everything as a good and bad which will be exploited.

 

Banning single and small armadas is unfair. Playing single allows low levels to learn war and get a few levels. Not all pirates have time to fully assist an armada. You can set a level limit. You can block alts as you find them. Further, what happens at last moment someone leaves and you fall below the minimum.

 

I do report alts and or a question about a players behavior, aka cheating, and sometimes I have a pretty good track record with kano, as far as the FP's sale it shows up for me, more often in the games I spend less in than the one I play the most lol but it does show up on a regular bases, just in time for a raid event. I really have no complaint about that , I don't spend until it does, if I need a few FP's I will spend a $5.00 a few times, but that is only near the end of a raid event and in one game, I use the raids over the years to up my energy and stamina, to the extent that I don't have to spend that much now

 

Kano did say in a post in this thread, they agree they jumped the gun on their idea, for all of the good reasons we brought up

 

Just limit the level you have to be to start a Faction/Guild/Armada and leader has to be a certain level to join War. Problem was level 2 alts making armada and joining war. Make them work harder, have to get to level 100 before leader can join war lol

 

You are on the right track ZSlayer. We already have a level restriction to create a Faction but one issue we have seen is that a "mature" account is creating a faction and then handing the keys over to a lower level alt. If we can tighten up this change of ownership workflow it would go a long way to address the root of the problem we are trying to solve.

 

What if limited the amount of guild's/armada's etc. a mature account can create in "X" period of time? Just a thought

 

Based on what you just said. You could place a restriction on the level of the who can be leader. If they have to be level 50 to create an armada then they should be at least level 50 to be leader of an armada. Frankly, I would raise that to at least 100.

Alternatively or in addition, add a block that you can only transfer leadership after 60 days. Unless someone is fed up with being leader before then and has someone to transfer to (contact support if that is the case), actual leaders will stick around for the 60 days or disband the armada before then if they don't want to play any more.

Also, please see my suggestions for searching for armada's. This may help limit the number of new armada's created because players cant find what they are looking for or it takes too long to scout for a new one. And I also understand that there is probably a lot of coding involved with ever suggestion I make.

 

This has been seen and noted for future development. I 100% agree that this something that would make finding a faction a LOT easier than it currently is.

As for the suggestions re Factions and Faction Wars, I appreciate it @JADES and @Yeet Scarlet. We have been discussing something along these lines today. Stay tuned for any future changes relating to this in our TGIF posts.

 

This is a suggestion i made not to long ago about the armada wars. From what i can tell the true problem about alt armadas is not that they are being created or handed off to smaller alts, its that they enter the war and screw with the tiers.

With the above quote, to better put it in context for this thread and go into more detail:

There are 2 groups of armadas, Group A and Group B

Group A -

• This group consists of any active armadas that opt to join into the war, no change on this front as it is exactly as it is now.

Group B -

• Consists of all armadas that have not signed up for the war.
• Total armadas is totaled up for group B and divided out to be tiered, doesnt matter what armada goes where as they will be curved stat wise.
• Stats curve based upon average per tier of group A
• armada names get masked similar to BA where it shows everybodies names as - Pirate - , instead of pirate they are labled as Armada 1,2,3 ect to better help people when saving as a target so people know how to properly coordinate an attack to get the kill on them.

An example of this put into practice is this:

Group A -50 armadas enter

• Tier A (total 10 armadas) - average strength by adding all attack and def and dividing by 10 equates to 75m/75m (this will be used for group B stat scaling)

• Tier B (total 10) average strength 50m/50m
• Tier C (total 10) average 40m/40m
• Tier D (total 10) average 30m/30m
• Tier E (total 10) average 25m/25m

Group B - 150 armadas not entered but created and have at least a single member holding the title for armada to still be around

• Tier A (30 total) Based upon groups A average stats these armadas will be at 75m/75m with a 15% variance in strength as to not have them all the same. This would bring totals ranging from a bare minimum of 63.75m/63.75m - 86.25m/86.25m
• Tier B (30 total) 42.5m/42.5m - 57.5m/57.5m
  
• Tier C (30 total) 34m/34m - 46m/46m
• Tier D (30 total) 25.5m/25.5m - 34.5m/34.5m
• Tier E (30 total) 21.25m/21.25m - 28.75m/28.75m

- The scaling for group B would be rng within the said range.

- Any armada in Group B are not eligible for any rewards since they are essentially ghost armadas that get scaled accordingly.

- Armadas in group A are ranked just as they are now, no change.

- As to not completely flood the war with more inactive armadas then necessary to provide a ample amount of competition between eachother, group B could be capped at 2x the size of group B. Group B is further bound by only being activated and armadas placed in if total number of armadas entering on their own (meaning group A participants) is at or below 100.

 

I strongly believe that if there were an ample amount of armadas being entered into the war the alt problem where people enter them would not occur due to there being no reason for it to happen.

of course i can think of a couple reason why which would be for the creators of the armadas to farm the kills off their alts armada to win the war or place higher. There is not really a way of stopping this since it will happen no matter what, putting a lvl cap simply delays the person until raiding pops up where they lvl the account a bit and then back to the same situation at hand. Having a number cap on people before they are able to join the war just causes more alts to be made to join said alt armada, still not fixing the other issue of alt armada farming.

Now to address the other issue of alt farming, the solution is not simple in the slightest and there can only be preventive measures in place such as the lower lvl cap but as stated above that is solved with a hour or less of raiding. So to solve the raiding issue, have a lvl requirement to join or start a raid. Set the requirement to 250.

Have a raid limit in place alongside a war lvl join requirement and the odds of a player sitting a week or more to lvl an account to create an armada that will inevitably be banned shortly after for only a couple extra kills will severely limit the problem down as the ease of access goes from a couple minutes to a couple weeks.

Have the same limit on a player being eligible to receive leadership furthering the time to get only a small gain in the war.

to put into points without explanation:

• raid minimum lvl requirement ~250
  
• armada leadership minimum lvl requirement ~250
• cant join war until lvl ~250

Of course these will not completely stop the cheaters... but as i said before that is an impossible task and the only thing that can be done is raising the bar of access which in turn raises the time needed to create the alt to be capable of abusing. In that time of raising several alts the player cant get them banned and needs to keep them active. If something takes a couple weeks for a marginal gain in the war the players actively abusing this will be severely cut down. As of now it is being abused so heavily due to there being no low limitations in place to stop it from happening.

With these in place the bare lvl requirement will probably need to be fine tuned and adjusted accordingly to better find an optimal minimum requirement to best suit the needs of lowering the abuse currently happening.

 

Lol, I swear I see a new issue added to this everyday. Armada War Ghosts, Alt Accounts, Alt Farming, FP Sales. Though I'm not surprised. Theres no such thing as a perfect game, unless youre talking solitaire.

Little confused by your post. So:

• Group A has at least active member.
• Group B has no active members.

Whats stopping alts from being active the week before a war and then sitting there?

(Further reading in second post said you know this) Also, whats wrong with making a cheater work harder to get what he wants. I guarantee you that if the level cap to be a leader was raised to 100, 200 or something, you'd see an immediate drop, followed by less than half of the fake alt armada's returning and some of the cheaters quiting and or complaining. Within that time period, more ideas can be generated on how to further prevent the issue and test solutions without watching monitoring complaint tickets about alt armadas in the armada war. There isnt gonna be a single be-all-end-all solution until further testing is done.

Making a raid requirement seems a little rude to new players who actually want to play. Maybe making them less frequent seems better unless youre saying raids and bosses are the same thing, as you can level pretty easily with enough bosses. I can get at least 2-4 levels in a day and I dont have a LOT in stamina, I think?

I feel like I already stated about making the LEADER role have requirements. I just didn't bullet point it...

• Raise the armada creation requirement.
• Place those requirements ON the LEADER role
• Player maturity is greater than 60 days
• Add a 60 day block between transfers

"IF PLAYER B Level > 100 AND AGE > 60 AND LEADER has been leader for > 60 days, THEN TRANSFER SUCCESSFUL!"
Manual transfers with Kano's consent.

The above along with divisioning the players not the armada, as I suggested in an earlier post, would, from my understanding, eliminate any interaction of alts and high level players (unless they wanna level the alts all the way up to a hit range). But I dont understand how the armada's "battle" in the first place. Such as how I cant hit a Division D without losing 2/10 but another player can go 10/10. If our overall armada attack and defense is averaged, I should be hitting the same as everyone else in the armada.

Side Note: I would never say that coding is a fix will be an easy solution. Simple explanations are one thing. Executing them is another. Freaking hate VBS coding. BBC is easier but STILL. UGH!

 

With the introduction of Raid bosses accounts can level to 1000 during 1 event.

so you'd also have to add the 21 day protection to the joining/creating as well. And many of these folks have long term alts that it's no biggie to drag out to create/lead a faction.

May help though, I have no idea. Just keep in mind, the game used to have a lot less ways to level so levels were a good check system, not so much anymore

 

Group A is just the people that manually enter. As in exactly how it is now, anybody that is entered currently would be considered group A.

Group B would be the random already created armadas that have not signed up and are scaled accordingly to the overall averages based upon group A.

Everything is dependent on group A. If there are not enough entered in group A then group B armadas will be put in and when put in scaled accordingly based around the averages rng'd to +/-15% to add variation between the groups.

As for this, regular bosses you can lvl at a constant speed but it is not that quick when even a small lvl, due to no or little stam. The best way would be to battle lvl. A new player that is immediately given access to raids only takes a hour to get up a few hundred lvls. if you set a minimum entry point then this further increases the time it takes for a person to start taking advantage of an alt in the war. The restrictions i mentioned above would limit a players ease of lvling initially when starting the game which does have its downside but for the most part are more upsides to it if it can severely limit alt abuse. The odds of a player logging several alts in every day for a few weeks to get them to lvl 250 is unlikely. only the truly determined will do it, especially since they have to keep them from being banned within that time frame as well. Once it is banned then the person has to add another few weeks to start fresh, rinse repeat every time its banned.

With the time to exploit bar raised to a few weeks the ones abusing it currently will probably keep at it for a little while but as their accounts get banned and they are forced to start over again and again within a year the amount of abuse should drop drastically due to the sheer amount of discouragement it is to take the time to create and farm the account up for little gain.

There is never a 100% way to rid of alts or cheating in any game. the only thing that can be done is tactics and methods put into place that discourage and heighten the time needed to be sunk into the game to a point where it will sooner or later be to demanding to keep up hence why there will be a drop in the abuse in time. If said cheaters start quitting the game, yes it is a player lost but in my opinion a player that shouldnt be playing with the rest as they blatantly abuse what is given to them and will indirectly or directly drive away the true players that are playing by the rules which are the ones you would want to keep around.

 

On mobile, in school so I'll re-read that to amke sure I understand what you're saying @neill1990.
But, if you refer to my post about divisioning the player, averaging those player divisions to get the Armada Division, I think that would clean up the Armada wars.
Any Armada can enter but a single Division A player can not hit a Division E unless there is Division A level player in that Armada and even then, that's gonna be the only player they can hit. Unless the alt is within 500lvls of the main, they won't be able to touch then, let alone kill an entire Armada with low levels.

I'll edit this later....

 

Decided to make a new post....
@neill1990 So then all alts would have to do is enter the war and they would be placed in Group A. 5mins before war starts, all big THICC bois sign in.

Anyways, considering an alt isnt a normal player, their gonna be putting all their points into energy or stam, buffing stats with clans and weapons. Leveling is pretty easy to do, probably get harder after lvl 1000 or so. If they put all their points into Energy, they could adventure till 250. 500 energy gets me about 25% of my experience, if I pulled all my point into energy, probably could get 100% leveling done. With your raid requirements, when a raid boss does come around, as you stated, alts could just battle until they meet the requirement then join the raid boss. Nonetheless, I thought the problem was alts and alt armadas in armada wars. Not sure what benefit alts have outside of the wars aside from making your stats look good.

Referring to my previous post about divisioning the player (see below), averaging those player divisions to get the Armada Division, I think that would clean up the Armada wars. The main reason an alt is made is for a the main advantage. So place the alt out of the main's range. I assume most people who are making alts are probably Lvl 2000+ or where ever the high end of the level stick is at. If you division the players within an armada, and then filter who can attack who, you prevent the mains from attacking alts because they are out of their attack range.

Adding more in-depth below:
Example: And Im just throwing numbers out, especially the levels and Rank Ranges. Adjust to realistic standers for gameplay.

• Armada A: 10 members - Division B
  • # of Members - Level - Rank
    • 5 - 5000 - A
    • 2 - 2000 - C
    • 2 - 1000 - D
    • 1 - 500 - E
• Armada B: 5 members who are alts. - Division E
  • # of Members - Level - Rank
    • 1 - 1000 leader - D
    • 4 - 500 - E

In the above hypothetical, armada divisions are an average of the overall member ranking. A = 5 points, E = 1.
With the restriction:

• Rank A players can only hit to Rank B, (B to C, C to D, D to E).
• Lower Ranks can hit up, but higher cant hit lower unless they lost for a retaliation hit.
• Essentially how the battle system is set up with protection.
• Higher Division armadas can attack Lower Division Armada.
• Players can only attack an armada if a viable player is availible

So with the 2 armadas above. The level 5000 of Armada A would not be able to attack Armada B. But levels 2000 could attack the one level D and the 1000 to 0 could attack the level D and Es.

• This would make opponents more challenging.
• Forcing players to fight people around their same level.
• Instead of one strong player one hit K.O.ing a low level Division E, at least half of Armada A would have to work together to kill Armada B while the 5000 work together to kill players around their level.
• You would also need to implement a "Player Killed" reward. 200 points for a Rank E, 1000 for a Rank A. If you strike the final blow on the last member of an armada, then you get the "Killing Blow" reward.
• But if a player runs out of viable targets, I would allow them to go to the next ranking but rewards would be heavily severed.

Sounds more complex. Basically, combine Battle Rules + restrictions. Make it an Armada War. Kill shot is when last member dies.
Probably need a lot more ranking levels. I would say breaks every 500 or 1000.

Additionally, as @Justin the killer had stated at one point, he had continually reported a player making alts. Proper reporting and a proper reporting system, should have caught this. If he can successfully identify a main and multiple alts, Kano should be on it. Deleting the main and the alts, and rewarding Justin for his work and anyone else who helped report. In my original post, I noted some flaws with this but also a viable solution to a main reporting his own alts, pressure for a main account, as well as follow up. My suggestion page also details a more in-depth reporting system as to better categorize tickets. If you've got a 100 tickets for one player all under "Abuse or Violation" maybe you should look into that.

Lemme know what you think.

 

I just wanted to point out that we regularly ban alt accounts and if you look near the bottom of the TGIF posts we call this out weekly but there are always going to be new alts popping up.

 

Cool. I wasnt sure if "Frozen" meant they haven't been playing for X number of months/years and so they were removed or placed inactive.
Additionally, it is true that alt accounts are always popping up but in Justin's case it sounded like he had the alt and the MAIN and his calls weren't getting answer. It may be best to follow up with him. Get a ticket number, names, and look into his claims again.

 

From the looks of what you are explaining that would completely change the armada wars to an entirely different event and take away what it is currently all about. Currently it is about your entire armada with pooled stats (top 15) that go and compete against other armadas that ave entered for the war. With your idea that would eliminate a lot of the full armada teamwork sectioning out players based on their lvl discouraging team-play since higher lvl players are being limited in who they can hit while smaller accounts are free to hit anybody. If the smaller accounts assuming the stats are still pooled together are using the stats as they would be that would open up quite a bit of abuse of smaller accounts.

say the top 15 are 5k+ lvls so they make the armadas stats overall an A tier then the other 10 members are low lvls, the top 15 couldnt hit lower then a B rank but the other 10 members given they would be considered E rank due to lvl, this would cause a latent advantage for the smaller accounts since they have A tier stats but classified as a E rank. I feel that would only encourage a bit of alt play since that would be easily exploitable.

If everybody is joined under the same flag with everybody being sectioned off into tiers each with their own stats but all points they gain are pooled together, that would be a completely different event that couldnt be considered armada wars do to the core fundamentals changing completely. But that event where each member is ranked and classified independently with all points earned pooled together does sound like it could be a interesting event to participate in.

Back to assuming nothing changes in terms of how division tiering ect works and things stay as is. The reason a A tier would want to hit an E rank is not necessarily for no reason. What most do is use the low ranks as a buffer kill. This is so that if they die then they are going to only lose 1k points instead of 2500 if A tier or 2k if B rank. Its a tactic to keep a higher score in case of death.

Another reason one would want to hit low ranks such as D and E is to slowly work towards the AW kill achievements since the amount required is quite a hefty amount that takes years for any moderate killer to obtain. Even the most avid of hunters will be getting at most ~50 per war which even then still takes 40 wars or 1 year and 8 months. I have seen a higher amount of kills obtained but not consistently throughout consecutive wars at a time.

Note below is assuming no raid is active or a raid lvl requirement is in place -

For the first part if an account wants to lvl fast they wouldnt just pool everything into energy and stam as the other stats play a vital role in the payouts one receives. For example if an account only sunk into energy they would quickly find themselves not being able to lvl more then a single lvl or 2 a day relatively quick due to low energy payouts. You only get 500 energy per lvl which by lvl 50 even due to the low xp on return wont get far as a low lvl. The curve as far as i see for energy on return does go up but anybody that gets up over 3k wont be lvling much at all and would be hard to even obtain that lvl by solely energy. Would require quite a bit of fp to do so since it is 10fp per refill the fp obtained if they gain 1 lvl per refill is a 1 fp per 10 spent, fp wouldnt come quick enough to suffice the demand.

As for if they put only into a mix of stam and energy the same would happen as above due to lack of strength the battles couldnt be won easily past lvl 30 if that due to no core stats to buf one to enable a win. Essentially the same situation as energy stated above.

Might have stated above a bit confusing but in short without putting into the core stats a accounts advancement will be quickly put to an end unless massive amounts of fp are spent and sunk into the account to improve. The only feasible and quick way to lvl a lower account given no raids is to build it normally.

To expand a bit on the core stats health will improve your potential of damage in turn increasing your xp payouts. low health will quickly stifle your payouts leading to more stam then nessasry to lvl, one needs to find an equilibrium there.

Def for battles and bosses, if an alt highly doubt they would put into it as it doesnt affect your active xp payouts only inactive when people are attacking you and damage received lowered. I could be wrong about not improving payouts at all but from my experience it doesnt in regular battles or bosses.

attack raises the min damage one will be able to deal and with a higher min damage capable of being dealt means a higher low end for xp payouts.

To properly raise an account at the fastest pace i have been able to find. One would need to keep stam, at first a bit above their lvl, then have equal attack and health to properly raise their xp payouts for optimal battle lvling to be able to win. If they are solely trying to lvl it up quick no energy or minimal amount would be raised. the 50 stam with optimal lvling as far as i have learned will take you a fair ways up given you are able to quickly add some caps/obtain some purchased clan items. With a complete optimal situation and not losing it would take a few days to get the account to lvl 250 by battling only. Again though this is given an optimal situation where they are immediately gaining a fair amount of caps and inventory to boost battle stats in comparison to the others around him as to never lose a fight. In a realistic world though the time required would probably be at best a week of decently active playing on just that one account.

Now another situation could be the person makes 2 alts at the same time and batltes them together... the main problem i see with this is they will be almost instantly banned. sure they will lvl extremely quick but the odds of 2 people happening to join and then happening to fight continuously matching attack and def health accordingly is not going to happen in the real world. I firmly believe kano would immediately see this and the moment they do its gone and the guy needs to repeat the process. Sooner or later though the steam the guy has of continuously getting them banned and no benefit happening will be gone and it will stop or be severely limited.

Currently if a raid is going only takes an hour to raise an alt up a few hundred lvls, but with a raid lvl limit that cant happen in an hour, it would take at best a few days average i believe would be around a couple weeks. They also wouldnt be able to participate in AW due to their low lvl so the quick lvling there wouldnt happen either.

As for how all this ties to armada wars, this ties to my suggestion and possible solution of putting a lvl limit on raids and participation in the war. The longer it takes for a person to gain a account that is capable of participating the less likely a person is to continuously raise up said smaller accounts for them to join the war and screw active true players over. There are many things to consider in a change and the root of the problem is the lvl of entry for the mass majority of team played events. With a higher amount of time needed to gain a small benefit in the war it will less likely happen in turn benefiting the majority of active players.

--------------------

Wrote quite a bit here and is quite varied in what i talk about but all does tie together for the problem at hand lol. Can go into much more detail as this is a pretty complex situation with no single point solution to minimize the exploiters.

EDIT: this is a fresh write so didnt go over most of it twice, just quote if there is anything that needs more clarification.

 

There's never one good way to solve a situation. At best it's damage control by hitting a large factor. Keep trying to tell my college classmates that but who wants to listen to me.

The Armada war stats confuse me the most. I understand that the stats get pooled but when I played in the last Armada War, I could only hit Division E armadas successfully while others could hit C and win repeatedly (not one and done). So it didnt seem like everyone got the same stats. If power was pooled, then I should be hitting just as hard as the highest level member in my armada. If you have higher level members in your armada, the armada should hit harder. If you have lower levels in your armada, they should bring down the average attack and defense if power is pooled though if its only the top 15, then they should be hitting just as hard as the #1 player in the armada.

This is what I'm talking about. Everyone uses there own states BUT a level 5000 cant hit a level 500. They opponent has to be at least 4500 for a level 500 to hit (or where ever a good break might be). To kill an armada, you would have to use chat an coordinate with your team to pick a good target where you can clear all the members of that armada. Guess it makes it even more strategy based. "Are we going for E-Rank player kills or Division A armada kills where there are higher lvl player? 100pts for a player or 25000pts (25 A-Rank players) + 2000pt bonus for kill shot"

I would say you also have to consider the achievement payouts of PF, speed ups, skill points. You can set your daily reward to just payout energy, boost from clan mates, character reload payout (Raiders at 2:30 vs 3:50 for others). The constant calender quests, digging quests, helping. All of this adds up, if they act like a normal player and people accept their clan invites. Health, then clan stats matter more than any core from what I can see when battling. And if you battle someone with similar or higher clan size and win with crappy stats you get a decent payout.

I do see a lot more "Frozen" accounts during armada wars. Guess Kano is doing some looking. An improved reporting system would help that though.

This is all as a penetrative to them become an Armada leader right? Currently, Kano doesnt have any restrictions on the leadership role after creation, it sounds like. Maybe level 50. If you take into account smack's remark about high levels creating armadas and transferring leadership, this does nothing. It'd be easier to put restrictions on the leadership role and hold them to the position for 60-90 days unless they contact support saying "I'm quiting the game, please transfer leadership to so-and-so." if they used their main to create the new armada, they just missed 4-6 armada wars. If it was an alt, they're locked in place for a while.

By changing the Armada war to cagematch PvP basically (no clan involvement, maybe, again I dont get how armada war attack and defense work. I have an idea of how it should be working currently but didnt experience it the same), where personal points earned go to an armada's points, and adding in those restrictions, unless the alt is of a level close to the main, the main wont benefit. And even if they get a bunch of low levels to join the main armada and attack the alts, the payout for a player kill wouldnt be worth it. Kano could also keep the same display load out, the restrictions and ranking would happen behind the scenes. Pitting Rank E vs Rank E within an armada until theyre cleared. Then moving to Rank E vs Rank D when there are no more E's left. Alternatively, they could use the Armada member list, change names to ranks and let players pick. If a Rank E wants to attempt hitting a Rank A. Let them lose and or be killed, giving point to that armada. If that Rank A loses to a Rank E.... Wow. At least you get a tap back.

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Think thats everything. It's pretty late. I'll double check tomorrow morning.