Using big scale events, like Anomalies, big ops, and RR, as filters for cheatears

We all have saw how the game went down under spoofer fire, how people got trolled and abused and exits the game. I understand that as game grow in size and complexity the chance of control that with a rudimentary ticket system was imposible. Also, vanguards and trs, as patchs to a broken system, proved that something biggers needs to get done. So, why dont take experience from other games that faced similar problems, and how they fixed that whem they turned into e-sports with tournaments that worth millions ? Yes they got players strikes that ended in the company making improvements. We got their expertice for free. Lets see..


Anomaly as a chance to filter

We all went to anomalies, we all had asked again and again how this one or this other one managed to always have 200 axas in that short time when we know farming doesnt make it posible. Of course theres a comunity that can support the ones that travels, and if that axas come from donations theres nothing to say about it. But if they were just buying stock? lets be easy on them and say that it was to avoid "no meeting the bar" their faction was asking. Or if they got backpacks with axas on muffgs? The anomaly was the perfect moment to put a filter on players. You want to be part? we will run a deep scan in your acount, track all your intems and lasts months of gameplay to check who you are.. and if you cheated, you are out.


Big ops

Yeah, doing a big op is amaizing. But how it has been done? that agent that told you that he will climb a mountain for a blocker was already there? Sure, we ask for pictures, but when game plan extends for weeks some things gests out of control, and there s come another big chance of someone liying up. You want to be in the spootligths of ingress doing that field? Then you should be put under deep scan. Every op we do NIA OPS should run a script of the events, checking how every blocker went down, and how all the keys got farmed, and moved. Everything is legal? no problem. Yo spoofed those keys? you are out.


Recharge Room keys to track shared backpacks

We know the effort that makes to commit a RR. Weeks of farming keys, killing your inventory and your game play. You only farm keys, meet some alien agent that cames to your city, drink a beer, empty your load, and start farming again, and again for a month or more. But thats an amaizing oportunity, yes again, to put agents under the deep scan of NIA OPS. Why? Keys moving all around the continent, from city to city, asking for photos as proof, and we know it was all legit, but does our enemy rooms do properly legit? The agent you sent with capsules reminded to check the scaner of the reciver to see if his acount was his acount and not a mule? who knows.. the more steps the chain got, the more chances some one can cheat with impunity. So why not take the chance of RR to track the keys all the way from the anomaly city to the RR cities ? If shared backpacks exists, and a network of cheaters like that exists, wich better chance to "catch them all" that a season of Recharge Rooms or Shards ?


I think we missed a big chance on those events, that could help to control cheaters. But they can be used in the future. Maybe they cheaters will not completely dissapear, but their influence will be marginalized to small neigthbourhood game. if they got they head to a event or something big, they will get baned. And with that the balance of the force will be improved.

Comments

  • GoblinGranateGoblinGranate ✭✭✭✭✭

    IT surprises me how much disagreement this post carries already.

    Perhaps performing full scan prior to a XM Anomaly is just too much server load, but checking all RR participants sounds good to me.

    About OPs, I'm not sure how that can be achieved as there is no list of agents that Niantic can look at (unless the SitRep includes it).

    There are many oportunities every day to hunt down cheaters, but I don't think that's the problem anymore.

    The real problem is that Niantic passively allows cheaters to be, and therefore, communities do it aswell. Why is it wrong to cheat if there is no punishment for it? Couldn't it be that is just being smarter?

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2021

    It would require a ton of work by NIAOps. (Read, too much).

    Remote Recharge room anecdote , I nuked my inventory, ran around city to collect keys from visiting agent, then got told RR was cancelled by our team. Queue crying. Least I could recharge with all the key recycles :)

    Maybe NIAOps can take a peek at ops that make, say, 500M MU+ ? Or link lengths that are over 1000km?

  • Neku69Neku69 ✭✭✭✭

    But they can do traceability, all items have an alphanumeric character attached to it. Using graphs would help them to visualize all the connections in a single plot. Some people do it on Twitter to check bots and stuff like that. Needless to say, this information should be kept for the company only, as it would be used as a weapon to **** agents.

  • ZeroHecksGivenZeroHecksGiven ✭✭✭✭✭

    I think the way I see it, is Niantic should already have these filters in place. Why should I have to have my account inspected to enjoy the game? It should already be under scrutiny, right? What is going to be found that shouldn’t already be on the radar of Niantic.

    Okay, so then what if does goes under the microscope. Will we have a chance to defend ourselves if there are false positives? And there will be. We’ve been banned for simply updating our phones....

  • ArtilectZedArtilectZed ✭✭✭✭✭

    The last time we had shards, a number of known cheaters in my area were perma-banned. All of them had to make new accounts, some of which were soft-banned later, some were perma-banned (again) because they went back to what helped get them banned in the first place.

    Niantic already does a lot of what you're suggesting, they just keep it on the DL and don't make much in the way of telling us that it's happened.

  • There have already been ban waves related to the purchasing of gear, so they already do something like what you propose to some extent. Could stand to be a bit more frequent imo. However, I think the logistics do to what you ask for a game are too much for every "big op." People are doing ops all over the world on a daily basis. Devoting resources to looking up past ops when the resources don't exist to consistently deal with a brand new account either killing/flipping an anchor or spamming blockers before being discarded.... I just don't see how it could be maintained.

  • MonkeyPeltMonkeyPelt ✭✭✭✭

    This. SO MUCH THIS. I get it would be resource heavy on Niantic's part, but few things (I can't think of any) are worse than cheaters in this game. I think some sort of verification system could go a long way; verify by phone number, or credit card, or something that can't be easily replicated.

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