Why are strange accounts not banned?
From time to time I see accounts that behave strangely. Some may have a medal for the first anniversary of the game and an account level 8 in 2022 and play here and there for five minutes a year. Other accounts may only have resonators installed on certain portals. Well, you know, the account of a brother, sister, mother-in-law or a friend who periodically comes from afar. I know about the third, level 1 accounts are filled with quantum capsules or inventory items, and items are only transferred from these accounts, these accounts do not participate in the gameplay in any way.
Is it really impossible to identify patterns and ban all suspicious accounts automatically?
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If you think they’re breaking the terms of service then report them.
Some players just drop out and might come back in for events though. Some players may have limited play time so only deploy to a Portal they pass by.
As for the ones that sound like backpacks, report them. But just because someone is playing differently to you, doesn’t necessarily mean they’re cheating or breaking terms of service.
My wife has an account and will usually only log on to top up the couch portals when I ask, or to do some missions/event stuff. The rest of the time she doesn’t bother, so that may look strange to some.
What you describe is good in theory, but in practice everything is completely different. We repeatedly tried with our team to ban such accounts. Wrote complaints but no result. Imagine, some agents who have two accounts on their portal. One wife and the other husband. "Husband" does not play, but his resonators and modifiers are located on almost all important portals of the wife. And we can no longer prove that one cunning lady has two accounts. And how can you prove to Niantic that this is played by one person from two accounts? The wife's account constantly lights up in the logs, and the husband's account appears only when it is necessary to upgrade a certain portal.
Another case, one person comes to my home portal, I see him through the window. He takes out one smartphone, takes it in his left hand, and takes out another smartphone, takes it in his right hand, and starts attacking from two devices. My logs show one player, but in fact the attack comes from two accounts. To whom and what can I prove and most importantly, who can I file a complaint against? He will say he was with a friend, but what will I oppose in response? I can't even make a video without his consent. Not to mention looking into his smartphones from which accounts he plays.
Third case. The player who has the bags. I don't know what logins his accounts have. But I know this player, we wrote complaints about this player. And what is the result? The player's main account continues to play, he always has resonators and modifiers in excess of 2000 inventory.
So why not make an algorithm ourselves that would ban bags (accounts that only collect stuff and transfer it to other accounts, but do not play at the same time) Or ban accounts that just appear at certain of the same portals and just put resonators and modifiers?
Or is it possible to ban accounts that only charge portals? This would stop all bots aiming to charge or collect items from specific portals.
There's nothing in the rules that prohibit:
- Playing the game by only acquiring keys recharging portals.
- Playing the game only with a friend, spouse, etc.
- Playing the game only by holding on to gear for others.
- Playing the game only by hacking portals and giving gear to others.
- Etc.
That is the problem.
And it's a tricky proposition to start legislating what you have to do to be a "real" Agent.
Yeah trying to develop an algorithm for gameplay sounds disastrous for this game.