Damn GrandMaster just cheated on me. Had duel accounts, I reported on the link. Pretty obvious too since both his accounts were the last two standing and then his fake account had cards, and he just put it in the center. Annoying as well. Now I know how GrandMasters play and won't be playing any of them.
Its so obvious when a "Grandmaster" plays. Stick around after one of his accounts wins and spectate, its soooooo obvious that the grandmaster wins with his/her other account doing nothing at end.
Why does someone like to cheat? How can anyone feel game satisfaction after cheating?
I'm with you. I like to play. I'm at Master level (around 4000) and when I hit a slump I drop to about 30,000. But I like playing and getting back up. And that requires playing against lots of various types.
I have 1 primary rule I live by when it comes to who I will play Risk with and who I will allow to join my hosted games:
* It doesn't matter if I am hosting or joining someone else's game...if I see a Grandmaster in that game, He is booted out if I'm hosting. However if I join someone else's game, I just simply get the heck out of it or don't confirm my play.. Don't care how legit or not he is. Not going to waste my time on a game that has a better than average likelihood of cheating going on.
* I used to also give the boot to anyone at the 'Master' level as well, but am more tolerant of that level now since I changed my game strategy of only allowing 1 human person to join me and the rest are the A.I. so in that way, it would be impossible for them to play 2 different accounts in the same game.
I am currently
We have banned several cheatrers, hackers and exploit users (double troop bug users) last week, and we are in the process of granting rank points to players who lost against those.
- Ivan@ SMG
It would be so easy avoid cheaters if one would be able to see geo location and ip address of his opponents. When one human uses 2 characters they must have in common at least one of these these two things. Now every devices is GPS-able so should be very easy implement this feature.
Aurelio,
I get what you're saying, but that idea has some serious privacy/security problems. I, for one, would not want my IP address or my location to be made public like that. Furthermore, there are still many devices that are not GPS enabled. In fact, the device I use to play risk is not GPS enabled.
There are other ways to keep cheaters out of your games. This is what I do:
1) I always host my games. This gives me complete control over who can join.
2) I never play novices. This stops most of the two account type cheaters because often one account will be a novice and the other will be an expert, master, of grandmaster. It takes longer to get games going this way, but the extra time is worth it because it helps avoid cheaters. Furthermore, I would do this even if it weren't for cheaters because most novices play like fools and often ruin otherwise good games.
3) If players join my game at the same time, I boot all of them except the highest ranking player. More often than not, the high ranking player will leave too. I'm even suspicious of players who join within 10 seconds of each other.
4) I never allow more than one player at or above master class into my games. The probability of randomly running into more than one player at or above master class is roughly 0.00000484. Master class starts at around rank 11,000 and according to SMG there are over 5 million players; (1.1*10^4 / (5*10^6))^2 = 4.84*10^-6. So if you see more than one player at or above master class in a game, they are probably cheaters. However, this isn't necessarily true if the host is a master. I myself am a master and I always want another master (or grandmaster) in the game, but it's rare that I actually get to play against one.
Doing those four things will keep most cheaters out of your games. Of course all that does nothing against the hack/cheaters, but they're much rarer than the two account cheaters.
Agree on the privacy concern. I think one thing SMG could do is to build a battle log for users. Something like "most common player you're in battle with." This would easily give away the cheaters.
And for non-cheaters, it's a great stat to see how many games you've played against your kid, SO, or parent. I would love stats like that. And if you do know that someone isn't a cheater, to see what that rivalry is like.
I've definitely learned a lot from this forum. First, I never play GrandMasters now (I'm at Master level). No point unless it's 1-on-1 with bots but even then, it's a crap shoot since it's all luck rather than strategy. Anyway if there were more player info, I really believe that will help a great deal.
Paul Jamrowski
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