Level 16 agent blocked from recharging his local portals due to CAL level?

2

Comments

  • wrexorwrexor ✭✭

    Or you give a durable key for someone else to link. Only "active" players get to make big fields?

  • fxcfxc ✭✭✭

    @NianticBrian This morning I reported the problem with the CAL system to the support, a little while ago I realized that the discussion was closed without giving me any answer. I opened another ticket, hoped that this time someone from the support has the time to answer me and give me some explanations. From the intel logs I see that the new CAL system is not preventing multiaccounts using gps spoofing from playing at ingress.

  • NysyrNysyr ✭✭✭✭

    Seems to be about the same treatment our agent is getting, luckily we have keys to charge his portals.


    The trigger seems to be link length hanging off the portal as the main factor

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    Level 16 does not mean that it's 100% a truly human player without spoofing or multi-accounting. If the CAL system works well and a level 16 player receives such warning then that player should think about it. Your friend, if it's not you as well, should behave in the game more like a real human being in that specific area. Otherwise, please submit the action logs of that human being that demonstrates how he/she plays normally on a regular basis, to prove that CAL system does not really work well.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    to let the spoofers determine whether his sub-accounts has accumulated enough score to be considered as a real human player or not as well? Very smart!

  • NysyrNysyr ✭✭✭✭

    Well, considering support went and raised his CAL after about a day of waiting, I'd say they had a false positive. Apparently they only do temporary raises so who knows if we have to play support roulette again.

    He's a hyper-rural player that doesn't link or field without being OP related because it'd just get in the way of things, but he hacks and recharges his portals every day. He's been involved in some of the bigger fields in this game.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    Then I would highly recommended posting a screenshot (while not showing the player name) of the reply that lifted the CAL restrictions if there is any. I suppose that there would definitely be some false positives, especially when player's rarely linking but doing hacking and recharging heavily and when it comes to OP that player suddenly starts linking. I'm not saying that this would make an "unreliable player" but many, many sub-accounts were doing so. As long as the reporting channel for this issue is working, if I were the developer I would still use this pattern to identify unreliable players because I suppose that there won't be many false positives in terms of this pattern but can help stop much more sub-accounts.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    A group of Enlightened players and you cannot find a single one with normal CAL rating to access to the portal? Then you should choose "team members" more wisely. Or are they really "team members"? Sure not an aviation fleet?

  • Otrera35Otrera35 ✭✭✭✭

    I guess you need to scan an absurdly large number of portals to reach a certain CAL which will allow you to interact with a certain portal. So, Niantic forces its players to do free labor to allow its agents to interact with portals....

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thanks for the reference. Glad to know that the appeal process regarding this issue is working and somebody is really reviewing the appeal. Then it seems no more problems for false positives, at least for now.

  • AzhreiaAzhreia ✭✭✭✭✭

    Another fantastic assumption not based on any facts.

  • Otrera35Otrera35 ✭✭✭✭

    It seems CAL or this new anti-cheat system will force players to scan portals so they can interact with those certain portals that they need for their ops. The CAL is starting to look like a double-edged sword and is considered discriminatory toward casual, semi-retired, retired players, and also towards players who live in rural areas.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    people spend alot of money going certain portals, how are u gonna feel safe doing op on hard reach portals not knowing maybe the game will false block you? it will not work write support and wait x hours for unblock.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    You are simply making assumptions that players' doing op would be very likely hindered while currently there are not MANY false positives reports for CAL warning. Let's see.

  • KarM3LKarM3L ✭✭✭✭

    That's been happening for Years anyway.... atleast now there is an alert of sorts....

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    They are simply trying to make a vague point that "this is a completely new system and has not been operating for years and thus would lead to many problems" which is not a matter of fact. The mechanism behind this CAL system is not new and has been used for many years (link ban) but the alert popup is new, along with minor game design retrofit probably. Just let it be and enjoy those theatrical replies.

    So much enigmatical feedback object to a way of anti-cheating, interesting. Obviously some players that has a unique way of playing are really annoyed this time while most of the players are supposed not to see CAL warning at all. I'm glad to see such fuss on the forum demonstrating how agitated some potential account abu.sers are, while false positives of reliable players could be reviewed and rectified fast.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭

    There is no proof that CAL system encourages or requires portal scanning. You guys are continuously targeting at scarecrows to claim that an anti-cheating system is essentially bad. Interesting.

  • fxcfxc ✭✭✭


    "reviewed and rectified fast"? I got the reply after 17 hours. Luckily it was just about recharging the portal, if it was an op I would have had big problems

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    And that single pattern won't make you CAL score reduced, I guess. Niantic has been promoting portal scanning frequently. If it helps raising CAL score then Niantic sure would write it down as an suggestion in the feedback template. Now that this is not the case, it is meaningless to drive the topic to portal scanning which is for now completely irrelevant. Normal players don't even need to think about how to raise CAL score: just behave normally.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    But you are not doing OP. 17 hours is far more timely than normal anti-spoofing reports which may be never manually reviewed. 17 hours is much faster than some accidentally wrong account ban appeal requests. If players' organizing OP they should do a test in advance to see if they would trigger CAL warning (or link ban, before the annoucement of CAL warning). That's how players doing OP throughout these years. If merely recharging would lead to CAL warning then I suppose either the CAL system is completely failed (for now I don't think so) or, the system thinks your gaming behavior is to some extent "risky".

    For example some players have never been to that portal and that area and often plays "silently" in his/her own area but somehow have the keys and simply do recharging every day. That's one suspicious scenario coming up to my mind. If there are not MANY false positives reports in upcoming days, then it's a user specific issue regarding your case instead of a system-wide one. Of course I would hope that the dev team would take reports of false positives including yours into retrofit to make the detection more accurate.

    Post edited by TheKingEngine on
  • fxcfxc ✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    The concept of a normal player is vague in the absence of guidelines from Niantic. Given the area in which I usually play, I consider myself a normal player, there are no opposing players so I cannot make frequent attack actions. Doing a test before an op is not easy, you should interact with a portal protected by CAL, but can not know first for sure which portals are, try to make a long link? How long? A few weeks ago in Italy a group of fake accounts broke all the main portals on the sea without any problems it took several reports to get them banned

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    Doing a test before an OP is not that difficult as you said. If you were simply doing a recharging and the CAL warning is triggered, then other players can do recharge on ALL portals that would be potentially used as a test, too. This can be done in a silent way that won't make opponents noticed. Players have already been renting helicopters and BGAN devices to do an OP while some people say they can't afford a test? If they don't even botherdoing a test then just don't involve in OPs.

    Regarding "playing normally", obviously Niantic has it's own definition. Every player can play freely as they want. Player is not obliged to carry out a specific behavioral pattern. Players are not required to verify themselves and avoid playing "silently". But when it comes to OP relevant stategic portal, please play in a way similar to other (90%+) players and not similar to many account abu.sers. That's a fair request, isn't it?

  • SSSputnikSSSputnik ✭✭✭✭✭

    That doesnt always work though.

    Say for instance, someone visiting a remote portal, for which they have no key, in order to destroy a link or field and limited time on site.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    Yes but I don't think that if players never went to a specific portal then they would easily come up with CAL warnings on their first visits. I believe that this is an account specific rating system and high CAL score players are free to access to most of the strategic portals. If the system is designed well, most players are supposed not to be worried about encountering errors during OP and don't necessarily need to do tests beforehand. Give it a few days and see how it works.

  • TheKingEngineTheKingEngine ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    By the way, since you know that it's already hard to take spoofers down from users' side and even if they are banned, the damage has already been made...If I were you I would accept the cost of myself being wrongly (perhaps) identified as a low CAL score player, as long as the system would really make (even if minor) contributions to "preventing the damage by account abu.sers before it's made" and the appeal channel is working and there are not too many false positives. That is, this seems endurable for the greater good.

    I understand that you felt uncomfortable and angry during that 17 hours. However, if I were you I were not going to complain much (it's not even directly banning accounts and my regular gaming experience is not affected), unless the system proved to be completely uselss and incompetent. I'll just take it and hope that CAL system can punish true che.aters more serverly. Trivial false positive reports do not mean that the system is poorly designed and I won't ask my ENL allies to collectively go to the forum to express strong opposition to it by establishing scarecrows as targets.

  • AkakunAkakun ✭✭✭

    So, they basically introduced some kind of "trust factor" system to protect specific portals. Of course agents wouldn't be able to know their CAL, the same way a game dev wont tell you your trust factor level and/or how to increase it. Because the key of the whole system is to encourage players to keep a clean gameplay.

  • Otrera35Otrera35 ✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2022

    Yet, there is no way for this new system to detect an account with multiple users or what we call "bots" out there. It's always interesting to find out that an account can create layered fields and get a lot of glyph hack points simultaneously in a night. In fact, this CAL system rewards an account with multiple users because the boosted activities will surely meet the CAL activity requirements...

    Post edited by Otrera35 on
Sign In or Register to comment.