Problem is, won't creating some kind of fingerprinting/identification system like this just end up making smarter abusers? If they've gone as far as creating clans and multiple alts to abuse the system, they'll end up doing whatever is required to not be pegged by whatever identification system is put in place

If T1 surrenders or boots are a sign of abuse, they'll end up as T2 surrenders or boots, and if that is next banned, then it'll become T3 or just poor play the whole game to lose quickly

But if the ID system can be done somehow, some good punishments would be simply redact FWs from players pegged as abusers, and if a given clan has higher than some threshold of abusers, redact FWs from the whole clan, if the abuse continues, lock the player/clan out of CW for the remainder of the season entirely, or maybe for a fixed period like 1 or 2 months (which would span >1 seasons)

Can we accept eternity stalling on clan league or will that acceptance only lead to worsening the situation further and further?

MOD has a point.

Stalling was there before this issue.
Maybe It should be solved first.

Can you switch your investigation over and get the players who stall games out into the light?
I think its a far bigger issue than the one discussed here.

krinid has a point, that sort of thing means that those rigging will get smarter and get around it somehow. but still better to punish ftw/gn and maybe an enforced ban on alts in cw?

@krinid,

These abusers are inevitably going to get smarter over time. The fact that FTW/GN got exposed, means that their methods did not work, therefore any further abusers by default will try harder.

On Small Earth templates it's possible for the game to be over after 1st turn, so there should be no punishments for whatever happens on 2nd and later turns. The first turn punishments main purpose would be to make it just a little harder for multi accouters to rig Clan Wars and as result less of them would bother to cheat.

Unfortunate things can happen and some regular players might get booted on 1st turn. I think this is a rare occurrence and most of the time these players could have taken steps to avoid it, like waiting for a timeslot during which they would be less likely to get distracted. Perhaps each player could be allowed to get booted once per season during the picking phase or 1st turn and that should account for most of accidental boots.

I was thinking about showing some additional data on player's profile. For example there could be added a stat called "average game turns amount", so if alts play a lot of lottery games, it would show on their profile and would make it easier to spot them. Alternatively there could be a level limit added to Clan Wars, so that fake clans would be forced to waste even more time in order to participate in Clan Wars.

I think if any suspicious traffic is detected, a player could be asked to fill a captcha before they can join Clan Wars. This might be effective in those cases where alt clans try to use bots to join timeslots.

@3.14
Enforcement is the only way to go forward. If there are no consequences for cheating, then more players are going to do it. The more players do it, the more harm is done to other clans (for example legit clans would get less territories). What kind of measures are needed to be used can be debated, but in the very least any alts detected within FTW/GN and other related clans should receive account suspensions. Not punishing them will only embolden them to ramp up their operations.

They are already likely using a VPN and i'm unsure if Warzone does browser fingerprinting. It'll be hard to enforce and all the mods are volunteers, so no minimum amount of work can be expected.

Enforcement is the only way to go forward. If there are no consequences for cheating, then more players are going to do it.

I don't know that that is true, this has been going on a while but hasn't expanded much, probably because it seems more if a pain to manage that many alts rather than join a good performing clan.

The more players do it, the more harm is done to other clans (for example legit clans would get less territories).

It does contribute to shorter seasons though, which is a positive for every clan.

What kind of measures are needed to be used can be debated, but in the very least any alts detected within FTW/GN and other related clans should receive account suspensions. Not punishing them will only embolden them to ramp up their operations.

There is a limit to how many accounts/clans can do this, given how time consuming it is and the number of playable slots. This is probably why we didn't see the third clan, really right being active in clan war.

Just playing devil's advocate here, I agree that multiaccounting CW, as any other tournament/league is wrong and should be sanctioned.

it seems more if a pain to manage that many alts rather than join a good performing clan.

I'm more concerned about the future. Some day these cheaters might figure out how to automate this process and use AI, so it's best to prepare measures to deal with them in advance.

It does contribute to shorter seasons though, which is a positive for every clan.

It also contributes to legitimate clans getting less territories, which leads to worse idle rewards.

It'll be hard to enforce and all the mods are volunteers, so no minimum amount of work can be expected.

I think some sort of automated system should be designed to detect these cheaters without a need of mod involvement. I think a mod could just get a final report of detected alts and then confirm it or alternatively, suspended accounts could file an appeal and then mods could determine if they were rightfully suspended.

I think, that sometimes we keep missing the point. The core issue is not that clans farm free wins, or surrender at turn 0, or play badly, or etc.

The issue is that clans use alts in CW so massively so this became noticeable.

Eternity invested time to gather data to not only demonstrate, what a lot of people already suspected, but also find that extra dressing for the main course. (On an unrelated note, I believe, when this cw-alt issue gets resolved, Eternity will be able to continue his CL games. Thus, we are all interested in resolving the FTW/GN alt abuse. :D)

There are a lot of follow-up questions (which we all have different answers to), but I guess, with all due respect, noone of us (non-mods) even knows remotely enough about this issue to have a qualified opinion.

There is a limit to how many accounts/clans can do this, given how time consuming it is and the number of playable slots. This is probably why we didn't see the third clan, really right being active in clan war.

There is indeed a limit to free wins, but there is no limit to gaining advantage via alts.

And using alts in multiple clans cooperatively basically makes the scheme quite scalable. Imagine multiple clans with alts. These clans will quickly drop to the bottom of CWR and will have high chances to match each other to feed wins to each other. The only way to counter that would be template stacking by other legit clans, which is risky because of potentially no-games.

Let's say for a single clan the optimal limit is 24 alts (6 slots * 4 templates daily). Not sure that winrate will be 50% (FTW/GN's WR oscillate between 40-60%), so let's assume ~40%. Basically, we now get a strong top 6-9 clan, competing with Harmony for the top-5 spot.

Unlike Eternity, I am not willing to invest lots of time into research, but:

"It does contribute to shorter seasons though, which is a positive for every clan."
yes. the more games per slot, the faster is CW map complete.

"It also contributes to legitimate clans getting less territories, which leads to worse idle rewards."
no. Free win hunters like our clan provide ALL other clans with lots and lots of free boot wins. Plus a lot of games we play and lose, being mostly mediocre players only. All clans like Harmony have to do is ... to be ACTIVE and sign up for more CW games in more slots.

It is solely Harmonys' problem, that out of 281 members they cannot even manage to get 40 players into CW and only 16 players with >= 70% participation (current season). And then complain and insinuate that FTW are "stealing territories" from them or other clans. FTW like every other clan only gets territories for WINS. To date we have 18 "regular wins" and 14 "free wins" this season - out of 72 games. In other words: we DONATED 40 CHEAP WINS to other clans.


As far as a systemic remedy of "free win issue" is concerned, the easiest and most simple solution would be to increase clan CW rating for each free win by +10, rather than just +1. This would quickly drive up CW rating of any free-win hunting clan, match them vs. walrus clans & players all the time and reduce their chance to get free wins to almost zero in no time.

Without any need for manhunting. Without any work for mods. Without negative consequences for CW per se or clans/players participating.

Edited 8/16/2023 16:16:57

As far as a systemic remedy of "free win issue" is concerned, the easiest and most simple solution would be to increase clan CW rating for each free win by +10, rather than just +1. This would quickly drive up CW rating of any free-win hunting clan, match them vs. walrus clans & players all the time and reduce their chance to get free wins to almost zero in no time.

That is quite nonsensical. The medium and long term effect of giving rating points for free wins is the following for a given season:
"Inflation added to to each clan" = "Amount of free wins occurred during the season" * "Points per free win" / "Clan count in CW".

Note that the formula has no dependency on whether a particular clan had free wins or not. Clans which get the direct rating increase transfer the rating increase back into the system and every clan gets their share of points. IMO this should not be really hard to grasp. When Magnus Carlsen played on my chess.com account, he would greatly increase my rating in no time. However, if I were to continue playing on that account afterward, I would quickly drop back down to my original rating..

Edited 8/16/2023 16:53:17

Unlike Eternity, I am not willing to invest lots of time into research

It shows.

yes. the more games per slot, the faster is CW map complete.

You conveniently forgot to mention that shorter seasons lead to getting less territories and worse idle rewards.

Free win hunters like our clan provide ALL other clans with lots and lots of free boot wins

How charitable of you to take idle rewards away from other clans.

All clans like Harmony have to do is ... to be ACTIVE and sign up for more CW games in more slots.

You should take your own advice to heart. Imagine being so lazy that even cheating doesn't get you to Clan Wars top 5...

It is solely Harmonys' problem

If it's a problem, why nobody in our clan is complaining about it?

out of 281 members they cannot even manage to get 40 players into CW

We've had all our 40 slots gets filled for many seasons in a row.

only 16 players with >= 70% participation (current season)

Warzone is a game, not a 2nd job. Some of our players find more fun things to do when to play the same set of overused templates over and over again.

And then complain and insinuate that FTW are "stealing territories" from them or other clans.

Territories are supposed to be earned through legitimate ways. Territories earned through alt use are illegitimate and should have gone to other clans.

FTW like every other clan only gets territories for WINS.

Every other clan has to work to convince actual humans join them and then fight challenging games to earn victories for them.

we DONATED 40 CHEAP WINS to other clans.

In other words you've already stolen 9 territories from other clans.

the easiest and most simple solution would be to increase clan CW rating for each free win by +10, rather than just +1.

Looks like the clan with most free wins wants to get further in the rankings. How selfless of you to make such a suggestion!

This would quickly drive up CW rating of any free-win hunting clan

And demote any clan which actually wants to play their games.

Without any need for manhunting.

Without any need for human involvement. All praise the robots!

Without any work for mods.

Without any need for hard work. Lazy life is best life!

Without negative consequences

Apparently idle rewards and good sportsmanship doesn't matter.

Without negative consequences for ... clans/players participating

Why participate in Clan Wars if some random dude with an army of alts is going to make all your hard work worthless and take all the rewards away?

---

People like NONO are the reason why attorneys exist.

Edited 8/16/2023 16:58:03

It's against the rules to use multiple accounts in the same CW season. It's as simple as that. No need to get philosophical.

My dude NONO is trolling everyone in their face and the wisest message sent in the whole is by far Tac(ky)tical's lol.

But for the actual topic now

Each clan needs a n number of wins for their next territory, whereas this could be a bit more complex. Say for example if a clan has 200 wins up until day 20, and they have 20 free wins, only 2.5% of those free wins could contribute to the actual clan wars. So basically have a cap as a percentage of the total wins the clan has, that would contribute to the ratings in cw.

If a clan has reached this percentage, then in the algorithm matching opponents they would get a priority and face an opponent.

Hit me, how bad does it sound. Haven't thought a lot about it, maybe 1 minute

edit: dont take the numbers too srsly, they can be any percent

Edited 8/16/2023 18:10:35

getting a high ranking would indeed be worrysome for the FreeWin hunters.
I play to get my daily win, and one „real win“ per season.
otherwise the clan rating should be low to get the free win.

If I get matched with Good News, I surrender (if the Good News opponent isn’t faster doing so), because a loss against them drops our rating faster than a loss against OPtimum would do.
A good rating is something a clan can brag about (and should be rewarded separately), but a good rating is not what we aim for. Plenty of clans with bragging_roghts rating out there who don’t get to the top of CW anymore (i.e. Master-Clan), due to a reduction in participation. TLA will not get into the range of a rating we could brag with. And a mediocre rating already would deprive us of Free Wins. A simple solution to push us into the range of „low performing“ clans was proposed by Nono, and you seem to think that we would want a high rating, because Nono proposed that…

Nope. Less Free Wins is not what we want. But that would be the result of such an increase. The Free Wins would be spread over more clans.

I am also aware that whatever I write here will be seen as an implicit confession of being an alt.
For me, I know that is not true.
And I do not share passwords, which was also an allegation I read.

(This post was written by my father, who helped me formulate my response, and is much better at English than I am.
His handle is Krulle.)

A simple solution to push us into the range of „low performing“ clans was proposed by Nono


“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
― H. L. Mencken

Tell me, what the result of such a proposal would be, in your opinion.

@LAFfe Lukas: I have even given the formula above:


"Inflation added to to each clan" = "Amount of free wins occurred during the season" * "Points per free win" / "Clan count in CW". (explanation see above)

That is a counterproposal, not what the simple fix-solution would cause.

Simple fix: "Give 10 rating points per free win"

Erroneous thought about the effect: "The clan raises in rating" (true in the immediate short term after the free win, but erroneous after a few more games)

What this will truly cause: "General rating inflation"

Edited 8/16/2023 18:47:29