C.O.R.E suscription and (fast track) cheaters reports efficiency
Hi all!
A new year has just started and it's an ideal opportunity to review a year of Ingress playing with its good sides but unfortunately also its bad sides. And what is worse in this game than cheaters?
My review of the 2021 year with Ingress support (and 8 months of subscription) gives me the feeling of having wasted my time writing to a bot that does not take into account at all what is reported to it. So 1 year of useless report!
Cheaters ruin the game in many areas with a very very low rate of ban. I know that spoofing is taken seriously by Niantic but the efficiency of the fight against spoofing is a recurrent source of dissatisfaction as we can often read it on this forum.
When the C.O.R.E subscription was released in February 2021 it was written here http://bit.ly/IngressCORE
"Community
As C.O.R.E. subscribers, Agents will be taking an active role in helping support Ingress. Currently a work in progress, subscribers will soon have access to Fast Track of spoofing-related escalations via Ingress Settings > Help Center > Go > Contact Us."
The opportunity to have reports of inappropriate gameplay reports better and quickly addressed was important to many of us in addition to the other benefits that this subscription offers (inventory, keys on maps, ...).
But nearly a year latter C.O.R.E subscription release, C.O.R.E subscribers have not noticed any improvement in the fight against cheating.
Thus, some of us have stopped their C.O.R.E subscription due to the fact that we are fed up with the lack of punishment for cheaters. Why to continue to pay if promises are not kept?
In a French group a poll was conducted with this question: "Did you have stopped your C.O.R.E. subscription due to the feeling of the inefficiency of the support to fight cheaters ?"
Results: 46 agents responded
15% stopped C.O.R.E subscription
9% stopped Ingress
37% are fully satisfied with their C.O.R.E subscription.
39% are not fully satisfied but continued their subscription mainly because of the 500 extra places offered in the inventory.
So can we expect better consideration of our reports of cheaters in 2022? Can C.O.R.E subscribers (but also all agents) finally benefit of an efficient access to Fast Track of spoofing-related escalations?
I hope that the review of the year 2022 will be more enthusiastic.
Best regards
CamsEyes
Comments
Well I personally am very satisfied with my CORE subscription. But then I decided to not let cheaters ruin the game for me. However the reporting via bot is at least perceived as being useless. Maybe because nia does not publish statistics year on year (unless I missed it). Like X many reports filed via bot, Y many reports reviewed by human developer, Z many accounts banned.
But at the end, neither ingress or the wider community is really interested in finding a permanent solutions. With free account creation that require no real life validation (like credit card etc), the cheaters can create throw away accounts for free - vs the CORE subscribers and sponsors paying for nia developers to fix the problem. It is a fight that we can only loose on our side. Because cheaters and spoofers incur no costs.
I agree 100% with what is written. The only purpose of the CORE membership is the extra 500 items and the CMUs every month.
I have paid for subscriptions for other online games before and being a customer, because yes we pay, allowed for enhanced support.
The support that Niantic offers us is abhorrent, lame and useless. They always answer next door and when you try to contact a Vanguard it's like the support is untouchable and they can do whatever they want without being accountable to anyone.
Anyway, the subject has the merit of being addressed again but I think that unfortunately it will not help. We have been screaming about the support for years but nothing changes even with our money.
I hope niantic will improve their reporting system as well. I have a blatant multi-accounter that plays near me. He almost always plays with a second account for extra mods and I'm assuming extra key storage as both of these accounts add links to his layered fields. On top of the usual second account he has others as well. He's been using the combination of these alt accounts to build p8s by himself. Reports from both factions have yet to see any of them banned.
I've cancelled my subscription. Mostly because of the latency issues, the lack of communication and just honestly bored with the game. I did pay for 9 months and it was nice having the extra inventory, but I've found my routine with the 2,000 limit and have found more joy in spending a few bucks on PoGo to hang with some homies, do some field quests together and not have to worry about rage quitting because the portal I'm trying to defend goes poof before my eyes. When Ingress can bring something more exciting than mesh scanning, chat and battle beacons to the game, I'll think about renewing the subscription, but for now, meh
As this thread is mostly about cheating. We had two different people cause issues in our area. One was eventually banned and the other was shamed by his own faction and seems to have just stuck with multi-accounting. The one agent that was banned took some work and help with a vanguard. Lots of work. Not only recording movements, intel screenshots and otherwise, but having to rebuild fields over and over. The other agent who was multi-accounting and using an opposite faction account to disrupt the game was never banned. I almost quit from that, but after getting caught by his own faction, it stopped outta nowhere and now he just used his two faction accounts openly (spotted many times with one person in his car). Nothing has stopped him and makes me think Niantic is taking a PoGo style stance on this anymore...
Ultimately the endless spoofing and multi-accounting will ruin Ingress, undoutedbly. The mechanism against those cheating is not improving at all. Instead, it's becoming worse (with the retirement of the old Fast Track Reporting)
also fake portal submissions is also a big problem, its a neverending battle i hear in local chats how it never stops to appear fake poi in wayfarer and most goes live shortly after....
Hi,
It's been almost a year since I subscribed to C.O.R.E. but I stopped this month. I'm not against it but if I pay, I feel I can claim a quality service. This is not the case.
Paying for a service that allows fake accounts to be created for free using fake GPS location tools: no thanks.
Playing against ghost accounts that can access totally closed parks: no thanks.
Ingress Prime lives on its community and the actions of real players IRL (!). Unfortunately, fake accounts will be its downfall...
My CORE is now also lapsed. Mostly due to poor communication from Niantic and lag.
I'll pay again once it improves...
Oh my devil, the report system is so freaking frustrating. I keep reporting this agent near me that shamelessly uses 2 accounts to put mods and resonators on the portal that's over their home and we recently caught them making jumps between two locations that are far apart in less time that it should take them (190km in 50 mins) but I keep getting this bot generated responses that do nothing or take no action against this person, and frankly this is frustrating. In my faction we're making efforts together by massively reporting now that we caught them jumping, hopefully some action is taken.
I've been paying my CORE subscription and I didn't know we were supposed to have enhanced or better response in the report, cause it doesn't seem to be happening at all. Looks like that was some false publicity from Niantic to convince people to pay the subscription, what a shame.
EDIT: i was guessing that maybe (in my case with my spoofer neighbour) they don't want to ban this person because she's also a CORE member, and Niantic ofc doesnt want to lose a subscriber, think about it.
Having a CORE subscription doesn't give you a free pass to cheat. CORE or not, if Niantic catches you cheating you will get banned.
Well yes. But in more general terms as I stated above the fight against multi-accounters and spoofers is a fight that neither niantic or the dedicated group of ingress lovers can win. Simply impossible with the current set-up.
And we now see that dedicated players and CORE subscribers drop their subscription. I doubt that will bring in more money to nia? Hence fewer developers, even less response etc. and the downward spiral starts or continues.
I love ingress and the idea of making the real world your play map. Brilliant. But I do get the feeling that the maintenance and support for this brilliant idea is becoming the downfall.
A large proportion of the multi accounters and spoofers will be part of the wider community. Players that are known. So the wider community is not really interested in keeping the game clean. And there have been plenty documented examples of cheating in other ways than spoofing.
On the other hand nia is a) not interested in solving the issue or b) not savvy enough to realise that if you as a company have to pay people to fix a problem, but no costs are incurred for those people that create a problem - then sooner or later those losses will built up on your side - and you get nothing back.
Personally I would gladly pay 10x the subscription price per month if it means fixing the issue. For example nia could create two server instances in which the portal database are all the same.
instance 1 is for all free players, cheaters, spoofers, casual players, etc. Free account generation … but hardly any support to fix cheating etc.
Instance 2 is only accessible for CORE subscribers and require full validation. Nia will know who the person is behind the scanner. And in spoofing etc will get proper support. These players can pick between instance 1 or 2. Just an idea. May keep the dedicated player base interested. Because otherwise it may all go down the drain.
Regarding fake portal and Wayfarer ab.use. It's a problem but less problematic than spoofing and multi-accounting. At least there really are Niantic staff looking at the reports for Wayfarer violations, whether in-game or on Wayfarer forum.
Just cancelled my subscription.
Useless support.
First step to quitting the game, thanks Niantic, if you prefer spoofers then that's your choice.
What I see here is survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. One Believer in Spoofing and several of his adherents against millions of normal players.
I see a player here who does not understand that he can be surpassed in endurance and perseverance. I see a toxic person here who creates abuse because of his own problems.
I sincerely wish that this person not only unsubscribed, but picked up a more relaxed game for himself.
@LuoboTiX look, another spoofer's advocate is here
Stop Right There, [REDACTED]
maybe it's enough already to accuse ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE in a row of spoofing? (@LuoboTiX for some of them i'm also a spoofer\cheater ant etc.)
edit: s_c_u_m is censured
I think it's better than living inside a World Conspiracy Theory. Isn't that right, Senor Foil Hat?
really spoofers don't exist ?
it's so fun to spend hours of preparation, being at the right place until it closed to just see a l6 finishing its tutorial and destroy the not accessible anymore portal
But unless it's on top on a mountain or on a island niantic doesn't care
Just Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi... With ingenuity and skill, you can find any way to any place.
I have not accused anyone here in cheating or spoofing except **** and other fake accounts. You are not related to them, are you? Then don't take it personally. And please refrain from name calling. Grow up.
As for advocating spoofers, I think @LuoboTiX did understand me correctly, I was referring to the comment in another thread.
Looks like spoofer's advocate has evolved
from
zero-compassion for malicious spoofing actions' and useless reporting functionality's victims
"I don't care about spoofing. General section is not for posts regarding anti-spoofing reports and defaming. Pack your bags and go back to ingress support channel. File more reports if you feel necessary"
to
blatant criticizing and sneering at anti-spoofing attitudes, attempts and volunteers of justice
"Spoofing does not exist. I see a player here who does not understand that he can be surpassed in endurance and perseverance. I see a to.xic person here who creates ab.use because of his own problems."
Wow
Where is NianticVK when an agent is being defamed? I thought the above posts by others are against community guidelines?
At least it's quite strange that multiple accounts jumped into this post, tried to drive the topic away and blatantly started humiliating you with words like "to.xic", "sxxm", "logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process" before you say anthing about them and on the premise that you did not violate community guidelines and what you did was merely urging for NIA OPS to do something on suspicious accounts, not defaming anyone.
This is pure and typical personal attack and seems happened after you and another agent tried to file reports and raise attention of several potential (I personally couldn't judge) spoofing accounts. Perhaps relevant. Maybe they are trying to close this post by iritating everyone who care about anti-spoofing. I'd advise that we do not engage into battling with them and to simply mark and block strange comments.
C.O.R.E member or not for now it has no effect for fast track cheaters reports,
If you ask support about it,the result is "We want to let you know that currently, we are working on it. However, we suggest you keep an eye on our Community Forum page for updates regarding this"
Also if spoofer is C.O.R.E member still can get banned, based my my experience by reporting spoofer, Lambert response does not mean an account is not banned,and fast tracked does not mean the spoofer account will banned
If you guys say Niantic support (spoofing) is Useless It's the same as what our local agents said to me
Sorry for my bad English 😁
I really love Ingress. It’s the only game I play on mobile. It makes me go out and play.
But the latency is destroying the game. I have to let my fields die out because they are simply not destroyed anymore. It makes me sad to see niantic struggle with this for a year, all the while I was happily paying that small fee, but it’s the only leverage I have. So I stopped my subscription.
If they would just take the issue seriously and devote all their time and effort on resolving it, that would be great. New features are all nice but useless if nobody is playing anymore.
So please, for the love of ingress, fix the latency. It’s been enough already. Let me pay for the game and have my fun again. :) pretty please?