Dear Administrators of Super Mechs,

I don't intend this post to rehash threads that have already been locked. You have made your position on cheating in Super Mechs quite clear. It is strongly encouraged and defended by the admins. Rehashing that debate would clearly be pointless.

What I do want to accomplish is to have you understand that because of the above I will not be playing or financially supporting this game until such time as cheating ceases to be tolerated and is appropriately punished. I feel ripped off having paid money for a game that allows this to go on. Shame on you.

Maybe I'll be the only one. Maybe no one will miss me. Maybe my continued financial support isn't important to you. I'm okay with all of those things. However, I will caution you that people will get more and more fed up with it and I won't be the only one forever. You created a great game. One of the best that I have played in quite a while. However, poor management of it has its current state in shambles. Please fix this, your hard work deserves better.

Sincerely,

James (jtothepowerof8, aka j^8)

Sorry to hear that J. I get exactly where you're coming from. Hopefully the management will use common sense and stop unfair practices.

I sent you a PM, btw.

Dear Developer of SUPERMECHS !


These words from that player (j^8), who used to cheat for medals, are unbelievable !
I have no words for such a unbelievable impudence !

Sorry for that what he wrote.

SUPERMECHS is such a great game and a lot of fun !!!

I will support this game as often as it is needed.
Every single dollar/euro was and is worth for that great game !

If you need informations about his "system", you can ask me whenever you want !

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tigermask gave j^8 more than 8000 ladder-points in 30 minutes
(in the last hour of a weekly tournament) that j^8 can overtake
a honest player - my sister bestplayeroftheworld) !

j^8 gave mrpickle 30.000 (!!!) ladder-points in the last 2 hours of
an other weekly tournament that mrpickle can overtake me for
mrpickle's gold medal !

GOD thanks my sister (bestplayeroftheworld) REPORTED j^8's cheating and ILONA know from that weeks before !
So she can evaluate the statements now from j^8 better !

PLEASE check the playing protocols the last 2 hours from the weeks, were
j^8 and mrpickle got their cheated gold medal !

To gain 30.000 ladder-points with cheating in 2 hours ... THAT is cheating.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

nice greetings
bestplayerintheworld

P.S.: SUPERMECHS is absolute a great game ... many of our big family plays it !

I completely agree with the purpose of this post, in the best intentions of the developers, the matchmacking had to be completely random.

But unfortunately, it is not so. For several reasons, many players try to drive the games against a particular player for cheating, as we have seen several times

1 - to get more score, trying to meet a player with a lot of points, but you can easily beat depending on your configuration.
2 - try to avoid potentially dangerous player that can make you lose a lot of points
3 - much worse, meet someone in particular that you know will give you the game deliberatly
4 - and finally, (here it borders on pathology), try to meet with yourself to get points

etc.. etc..

this is a perversion of the game, because in agreement with the idea of the developers, the meetings had to be completely random.

ELO formula is not a solution, unless the goal of the developers is to make transfer all the top players of level 15-16, 18, 22-23, all at level 30 making useless all tokiens bought to improve their mechs that are not 30.

concerning the reply of Bestplayer, I consider off-topic, because nobody was accusing him directly, we are just talking about a problem of the game.

Dottore

The only practical solution that I can think of (other than banned offending players) is as follows:

- Limit matches between any 2 particular accounts to 3 per rolling 30 minute period.
- Prevent further matches between any 2 particular accounts for a period of 24 hours following 5 losses from one account to another in any rolling 12 hour period.

Pros:
-If someone did want to transfer points between accounts at the end of the week, they would only be able to accomplish transferring around 5,000 points.
-Weaker players who dislike the current matchmaking due to being matched with much stronger opponents would be limited to 5 matches per day against any particular opponent.

Cons:
-Matchmaking could take longer for high volume players if they start defeating people 5 times. However, if you are evenly matched against a player you could get as many as 10 matches per day against them.

I think this is a reasonable middle ground to actively policing cheating and banning the offenders. I get the sense that banning isn't the preferred solution so this limits a player as to the benefits that can be obtained by cheating.

I would be very interested in discussing this idea in more detail if any of the devs/admins would like. I am very keen on seeing this game restored to one that is fun for all of the players and would happily invest my own time in helping to accomplish this.

An ELO system would pretty much do this and much more. To begin with it will be harder to notice, however over time your ELO will be razed and you'll be matched up against stronger mechs. This means those who are continuously winning games will keep climbing in the ELO rankings till they're in a challenging position or untill they reach the very top.

This will subsequently eliminate cheating. Those who own two accounts and have them fight each other for gain will struggle to do so. As one mech gains ELO the other one will have it lowered to the point where they won't be able to fight each other anymore. Depending how the ELO system works this could very well be with in a couple of games, and rather than being a daily fix will be a permanent fix untill both mechs ELO reach the same pint again.

As far as banning goes, it's very difficult to pin point a cheater on SM. During quite times (which I use to be up for quite a bit during my UK early morning/US night time) I would be paired up against the same mech constantly. I've rarely met a mech that can continually kill me (MrOneTwo being the only one, I think it was since the newer update). There were times in my stats where I would be beating the same guy 10+ times in a row before I either felt sorry for the player and went to do something else or he would get sick of losing to me as there was nobody else to fight. As far as an after match report it would look like cheating just as much as I have seen people accusing other people of recently. However all it came down to was the other player being the only other mech looking for a game while I was looking for one (as we'd both come out of the match and hit play again almost instantly).

I agree that an ELO system would work perfectly but only if it is cumulative. If it resets every week then it becomes rather useless for accomplishing the goal of eliminating point dumping.

So if the idea is to replace the weekly tournament with an all-time leader board I could not be more supportive of the idea! Would a separate leader board be maintained for each level (or range of connected levels, i.e. 15-17, 18-21, 22-25, 26-29, and 30)? If so, even better! Each player could have a separate score for each level range. If not, you would be forcing everyone to play level 30. While I don't love that idea I do think the benefit of eliminating point dumping outweighs the cons of everyone having to play level 30.

With respect to your discussion re: pin-pointing cheaters I must respectfully disagree. Without know what, if any, logs of matches are retained by the server I don't know what information is available to be used that is not available to the public. If there are logs of player IPs, matches, and outcomes it would be rather simple to design an algorithm which could easily and accurately identify cheating. Even without the algorithm a manual review prompted by player complaints would not be onerous. Failing logs of any sort, I believe it has been demonstrated that a very strong circumstantial case can be made.

With respect to your example. I highly doubt that 10,000, 20,000 or more ladder points changed hands. Even it was cheating, no one gained any real benefit from it. In principal that cheating should be punished just as severely but it would be highly impractical. It is the cases where a material amount of ladder points change hands that are worrisome. All one would need to do is identify that the two players are from the same subnet and it would be virtually impossible for them to not be either the same person or two closely connected people colluding. Instances of two unconnected people colluding would be harder to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. However, even courts only hold the prosecution to the standard of beyond all reasonable doubt. When the same two people fight an inordinate number of times on a Friday and exchange a large number of ladder points I do not believe any reasonable doubts can be said to exist as to how it happened.

I really don't want to rehash the debate about banning. If it isn't being done for lack of conclusive evidence (such lack I dispute) or some other reason, I believe that the fairness of the game can be saved through other means. However, it is of paramount importance that something be done. Even if one wanted to argue that no cheating has gone on, a number of players have a very strong opinion that it is going on without punishment. This perception of cheating is just as bad for the game as any actual cheating and I believe that steps must be taken to protect the game from even the appearance of cheating.

Could someone explain to me a couple of things about this new ranking-system that i am not sure if i understood correctly:

- Will the concept of 'ladderpoints' be completely eliminated ? If so, will there still be weekly rewards for the best players ?, Also if the leaderboard becomes all-time based instead of a weekly-based one, how can you reward weekly best players anymore ? Unless some kind of a weekly list is also kept to keep track on who was most successful each week, It makes no sense to me as who ever has won the most in total will win every single week because no one can bypass their rating ? (Argh this is so confusing i'm sorry i just cant explain it any better)

- Is this ELO-Rating simply determined by the amount of wins versus the amount of losses you have ?, if so, every player will initially just get a random rating based on how successful they were before the update was made, right ?

I hope someone can understand what i meant here, my half-decent English skills are just in contrast with the thoroughly dedicated & fluent posts j always makes i hope it's not as hard for you to read as it is for me to write, i will get better, i promise..

EDIT: Oh yeah i forgot to add, even with the new ranking implemented, how can you prevent two players of similar strength from deciding to team up & gathering a lot of points together and then meeting up to have the other one surrender ? This kind of activity has already happened frequently with the existing system... Or will just one loss against an opponent of similar strength be enough to lower the scores enough to eliminate the chance of them easily meeting again ?