Gamers' Values (cheating)

[Muf-Muf]

We will give a one-time friendly reminder about the rule to not go into individual cases that we made clear a few posts up. Thank you all for your understanding and cooperation. We look forward to discussing the topic of pushing accounts in more general terms.

Several posts had to be removed due to breaching this rule.

 

[Timneh]

@Muf-Muf the post i made earlier that you have deleted did not name any player and i used an example that had nothing to do with the game never mind a specific person, it was a point about something used by the police all over the world where a breach of law or rules are involved. This thread is about pushing and that is a breach of the rules so please tell me how my post broke your rules.
As there still seems to be a lot of confusion could you also tell us in detail the process involved for investigating a player suspected of pushing and what evidence is required when a player reports someone they think might be pushing because just telling the support team is a waste of time.
By not showing that something is actually getting done about these push accounts you are just making honest players think that they are being ignored and you are just paying lip service while you don't really care that people are cheating. In some of your posts you almost seem to be defending the cheats. You are shaming yourself and Innogames.

 

[DeletedUser3337]

I have come to following conclussion (one can never know for sure as Inno does not share the exact definiton of the rules)

If there is any sign that an account is being played.
For example last week:
-one quest is done in an event
-one trade has been accepted
-one manufactory is producing
-one province is catered in a tournament
That would be enough, even though this account is no longer upgrading buildings or scouting the worldmap or researching the techtree.

Donating KP
It is about the ratio that is recieved and given back. (one can never know the exact ratio as Inno will not share this info)
For example:
-Main account recieves 1000 KP last week and the ratio would be 1/10
Then a FS chainmail would be enough to cover it, as the player exchanges KP with his fellows.
The player donates 100 KP in the chainmail (and recieves them back).

So a player can use 10 alts. (does not even have to hide IP or create seperate email)
Logs in to those 10 alts.
Does a quest, starts production, gains tournament points and sends KP to main account and will never be banned.
As ... technically these alts are no push-accounts.

As for the upcomming Fellowship Adventures.
No creating alts to make badges is not pushing.
As the accounts are participating in gameplay.

Just my 2 cents

 

[DeletedUser3781]

I find it weird that we cannot get a clear definition of what is considered cheating by Inno.
That way, anyone who has more than one account and those accounts are interacting, cannot know for sure if he/she is cheating or not.
Imagine real life rules worked that way. Say, there's a highway with a speed limit, but authorities don't say what the actual limit is. But if you go faster than that unknown limit, your car gets confiscated. How fast can you drive on that road? You can find out only by trial and error.
Why not make rules clear for everyone? I know it was said that then cheaters would find a way to cheat going around the definition. But the thing is, if there's a definition of cheating and they're doing something that is not in this definition, that means they're not cheating.

 

[DeletedUser4240]

In other words should we think ... that 'ingame' there is no need for values, as its just a game?

NO. Wrong. Real world and virtual world are the same worlds made by the same people......where the real virtues are considered as outdated. Which are the real values today?The same one from the beggining of the civilized world.....But let's not make this discusion too hard (real)and concentrate on this game.
Cheating is a matter of choice.You are a cheater or you are not.I prefer not to be one of them......but.We haeve a rules here. Cheaters have to be punished. It is only on INNO.
BTW,Grepo solved this problem,long time ago.Maybe now they have the same problem.Or INNO don't see the problem in cheating?
Why wouldn't INNO reward the gamer who are not cheating?Just to show their intentions.(They have it, don't they?)
Oh ,let's play the game....and leave it when it becomes too much unfair.

 

[Muf-Muf]

We've had to remove more posts for discussing individual cases and some other breaches of our forum rules. Next time there will be warnings if posts need to be removed. Thank you for understanding.

@Muf-Muf the post i made earlier that you have deleted did not name any player and i used an example that had nothing to do with the game never mind a specific person, it was a point about something used by the police all over the world where a breach of law or rules are involved. This thread is about pushing and that is a breach of the rules so please tell me how my post broke your rules.

If you would like to know more about the exact reasons about why a post of yours was removed from the forums, you should contact our Support Team. The forums are not the place to discuss that, sorry.

 

[DeletedUser3337]

BTW,Grepo solved this problem,long time ago

May I ask what problem Grepolis exactly had and how they solved it? Its an Inno game too.

 

[DeletedUser4240]

@Pimpy
Yes, you may. I played Grepolis several years and in several different worlds. But every now and than, players were banned because they were breaking the rules.It was long time ago, so I don't remember the details, but double account in the same world was strictly forbidden.What was good in it?The other players knew,or just got such picture, that someone is taking care about regularity.This is important.I know I am naive and that there were cheaters which avoided punishment...but I didn't think much about them.To see that someone is doing something to prevent cheating and not encouraging it..... good enough for me

 

[DeletedUser441]

But what do they do if cheats spend a lot of money on the game ?

 

[DeletedUser4240]

But what do they do if cheats spend a lot of money on the game ?

.....believe it or not , some of these banned players spent a lot of money on game. So I've been told. But it was a rough game and players invested much more time and everything else in it. Game full of stress , if you want make a progress....so maybe because of this ,everything was more strict.
And maybe I should stop talking about the other INNO games, stop talk on the forum and play this one

 

[DeletedUser441]

To stay on topic , my values (if I'm allowed to say ?) are such that I play a city builder game because I detest war games where people massage their egos by destroying and stealing from other people's cities by standard and devious means.

 

[DeletedUser4240]

@Brienne
Yes,that's why I finaly left the game....because it was a war game, exhausting game. But I never enjoyed more than in that game....You just can not survive as a solo player. Alliance is all what you have.But ,I am offtopic now ...and boring for the other forumers. Forgive me, please.
Maybe we should talk about it on some other place ..

 

[Timneh]

If you would like to know more about the exact reasons about why a post of yours was removed from the forums, you should contact our Support Team. The forums are not the place to discuss that, sorry.

@Muf-Muf Why would i waste my time doing that ? Reporting anything other than bugs to the support team is just as much a waste of time as asking you anything. You have been asked to give a detailed explanation as to what hapens when a player reports someone for suspected cheating, your response was..... NOTHING, in fact you have been asked a few things and your response has been nothing so i will ask you again. Please tell us what is classed as cheating and what happens when a player reports another player they suspect is cheating ? Try doing a little of the other part of your job instead of just making threats to players and censoring them. If you actually answered some of the things that were asked maybe the posts that were deleted might not have been made in the first place so it could be your fault the posts were made.

 

[DeletedUser3337]

I read up about this topic on the US server, the German ánd the Dutch server.
Here are some quotes for those who are intrested:

Spoiler: US forum quotes

Your right this IS pushing, but unfortunatly not recognised as such by the elvenar team, we had this discussion on the dutch forum last october, 2 players where pushing like mad, screenshot, movies we had them all. even to an extend even a blind horse could see it was pushing.

The discussion was fierce, but in the end they told us they looked into it and the player did nothing wrong so no further action was waranted.
We protested like mad, but nothing changed.
In the end and we openly stated this that with this ruling the only option left for us who like the ranking is to either quit, or join the dark side. not because we wanted it, but because we were left no other acceptable option (quit)

right now the dutch server is one big push fest. where the starting player now owns 2 full fellowships of push accounts. all her wonders are now lvl 20 and there now used to "improve" the other guildies. once she puts down the new wonders (amazed she didint yet, maybe because she is 200k ahead of the competition) but once she puts them down it litteraly takes her the amount of times it takes to upgrade them to get them to level 20. The upside of this free for all is that it evens out the game, since everyone "can" push and get away with it, it evens the odds, if you like it, or if you join it is a choice you have to make.

the last statement in this continuous discussion from an innogames employee was (translated):

Many of our games have a competitive character but elvenar doesn't, you have your fellowship to help eachother, but this ain't a game where you attack, plunder or loose complete villages. outside of your fellowship you play this game alone.
Some "die hards" see the ranking as a form of competition and want to be as high as possible in the standings, but in fact this is not what elvenar is standing for

My question, then why does the ranking exist?, why does the tournament exist?, why do we get ranking points as a reward for the tournament? why did they add competitive elements into this game if it wasnt supposed to be competitive?
Why is the game centered about becomming "better" instead of many options to individualise your city? if just building was the point, should we not be able to rotate our buildings? should the difference between building a and b not be minor? in such a way that we can individualise our towns in such a way there awesome pretty but at the same time not standing still in our development?

Pushing is simply an unbalanced routine from A-->B. now what is unbalanced? we can argue about that.
But if the most extreme case of an unbalanced routine as I descibed earlier goes unchecked then I wonder what pushing in Innogames eyes is.
Because honously I do not longer know.

If we see months/year worth of KP flow from accounts A till Z flow to account XY in a matter of a few weeks. and thats not considered pushing, then I do no longer know what an "unbalaced" routine is.

Last october the explanation we got was:
"As long as the function of an account is not solely pushing, but also plays the game itself like has tech tree progression, ect, ect ,ect. is allowed to invest knowledgepoints into account he or she owns themselves"

Here is the link to the US thread:
https://us.forum.elvenar.com/index.php?threads/how-is-this-not-pushing.7704/

I also noticed the difference in forums.
How much freedom is given to users of those forums, to vent and discuss this topic.
One member even posted this link and it was allowed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness_doctrine
If I compare then really, there is absolutely nothing and no reason to edit or delete this post.
So please let it be.

 

[Timneh]

There is some really interesting reading in there Pimpy and if the Elevnar team put in as much time looking into the problem of pushing as you did into reading about it maybe a lot of the cheats would be found and banned but i guess it is just easier to threaten the non rule breakers and to censor them.
Maybe a certain CM could read the info in your post and then they might see how much freedom the rest of the elvenar community have and stop being such a dictator, after all we are all in the same game so we should all have the same rights and freedom of speech. It should not be one rule for us and another rule for all the other forums.

A lot of players in elvenar are interestd in how high up the rankings they can get and if Inno do not stop the cheaters they are giving the current fair players no option but to also start push accounts or they will have no chance of climbing up the rankings and in the end the highest players will be the ones that can manage the most accounts.

 

[DeletedUser441]

One account takes all my time ! At least three hours a day just to do my neighbourly help. If anything stops me playing this game it's the time it takes an honest player to try and compete. From what I have read I now think "What's the point ?". Combined with the excessive costs for expansions (I'm being asked for 6000 diamonds for a Premium Expansion) I also think the "censorship" is a big issue. Free speech is allowed in the majority of countries in the world , certainly those countries that have access to this game with active players. If there is need for censorship ; then there is cause for embarrassment.

 

[DeletedUser4240]

......."How about you get appreciative to those people heh?? They contribute to this society more than any of you here who is having fun for free. You don't wanna work for free, do you ?? Well the game creators don't either!! I do pay to play indeed ......."

Let's make the game " Pay for free"(not "play for free") and rid off all of us who are not paying.....and make space for those who pays for their fun...... Let them play among themselves with equal conditions.
To tell the truth, ,when I finally read this post(#33), I was so shocked and humiliated that the only thing that I want to do now with this game is to erase all my months of playing and trying to do something.
Tell me that this gamer is banned.......... or give me instructions how to erase all my activities here.Because my activities were not for free, they were only for the benefit of INNO and such people like him.
My only regrets are to leave some of honest and normal players who helped me so much..........
Love you all, indeed,
SummerMaya

 

[Jackluyt]

I have seen some interesting remarks yesterday as a respons to cheating (donating KP inbetween accounts)

I don't see how it can be 'cheating'.
Innogames are on record as saying that it is fine to give KP to another account of yours - as long as you are actually playing that city - not just using it to 'push' stuff to your main account.

 

[DeletedUser3221]

Yet on the other hand, our mod here said 'pushing' is prohibitive. It's silly to think that an account that's giving most of its KPs away to another city isn't a pushing account just because the account holder is doing some other menial stuff with the city. And it's even sillier not to call it cheating when a single person has 10 such accounts feeding 1 city.

In any case, this is getting tiring. It's clear that Inno aren't interested in promoting the spirit 'fair play' in the game. Oh, they say they do and I'm sure they like the sound of the notion as well, but their conviction isn't so strong that they'd be willing to ban cheaters and lose out on the money those cheaters spend on the game. It's Inno's game and they can do what they want with it, but their stance on cheating is enough to dampen the enthusiasm of fair players to continue playing the game - to eventually quit playing or stop spending altogether. I wouldn't quit right away, but I'd definitely never spend a cent again on this game.

I don't see how it can be 'cheating'.
Innogames are on record as saying that it is fine to give KP to another account of yours - as long as you are actually playing that city - not just using it to 'push' stuff to your main account.

 

[DeletedUser3337]

I don't see how it can be 'cheating'.
Innogames are on record as saying that it is fine to give KP to another account of yours - as long as you are actually playing that city - not just using it to 'push' stuff to your main account.

Yes that is true. As long as you play the alt accounts Inno does not consider it pushing.

My thread was originally about ***gamers values*** (not gamers' values). The quotes I used where responses of players to this question:
Quote: How can one get 639 KP in 2 days put into their wonders?
(this is not discussing an individual case but explaining where the original quotes are based on, where @JackLuyt was referring too)

To a lot of people this IS considered cheating.
To some people is NOT considered cheating.
And here I wonder, is this due to gamers values? We can argue about that.
But something só obvious is in my opinion considered cheating, even though Inno does not think this way.

So maybe the designers of the game share the same values of those players that put 639 KP in 2 days in their wonders?

Oh yes and btw, I will not spend a single Euro on this game anymore either, like @Xephiac.