Feast (Light Party) and Boosting

[Atreus]

As many already know, boosting is the practice of acquiring rating or points in a way that is unsportsmanlike or simply illegal. We already know it goes on in some shape or fashion, but most of the time we have no context. Today I'm going to give you that context.

To comply with the rules, all relevant names in images will be blocked. It won't take but a moment of research to figure it out though. I'm sure it will still somehow be considered a violation and I'll be OF banned but oh well.

It began when we noticed this:




Eight players of the same server, same FCs, and similar names suddenly and rapidly appeared on the board together with a substantial gain in one day along with average 50% winrates. This raised a red flag as wintraders and/or esoteric farmers. This occurred near patch's release. We made our reports and kept an eye on the board as well as the queue.

Yesterday we queued and caught the same 8. Only this time, one of them was boosted to Platinum, which you can now see in the leaderboard today. A whopping 800 points gained from boosting.

During our encounters, the team with the boosted all ran to the middle, took minimal, bot - like action and promptly lost.



Second round was their losing team, who ran to the middle and took no action before eating it.


Third round was the boostee's team again, only they woke up and attempted to disconnect and leave the game to avoid point loss.


They ceased queuing, but not before the damage was done.



You can see this change today on Aether light party's board. Tomorrow you won't see the change.

To other players, this is for your awareness and for you to know the things to look for to detect this type of behavior, especially on other datacenters.

To Square, this is a question. Are you going to let 8 legit players be put off the board by this kind of nonsense? Or are you going to let it slide and let it be the example? Since the season is not over yet, you need to be monitoring this. I doubt this will be the last instance of it.

Final disclaimer: the Faerie team associated with Blubbers Ubbers has NOTHING to do with this. They are another legitimate and skilled team affected by this.

[Blubbers]

Great post, this is a pretty clear-cut case especially given they're all the same server, FC, have similar names and same total number of games. Zhexos made a post that SE is taking these reports seriously on the sticky'ed post so hopefully this will get taken care of.

[Aviars]

If obvious cheating like this won't cause a ban idk what will.

[Bloodb]

there's cheating in solo queue rated feast as well.

[Szaveth]

I have to post this in 3 posts because its too long

You guys really need to do more research or at least talk to us before slandering us on an online forum. Yes, you bleeped out our names, but it takes two seconds to figure out who we are.

Had you made a character on Faerie and just sent a quick tell, any one of us could explain what you think is "cheating".

First of all, we are NOT win trading or boosting. We are a group of friends and some acquaintances that queue together for various reasons:

[Szaveth]

1. We are currently stationed outside of the country (90% of us are currently serving in some branch of the military; myself and 2 friends are both Navy (they are a husband and wife, I work with them every day), we have 1 person whom is a relative that is not military, and one dude is a government contractor whom is former military)
   
2. during our hours of availability NO ONE is queuing, so we've taken it upon ourselves to form a group that we can PvP against whenever everyone is available. We switch up the teams regularly to make it fair and sometimes we play different jobs when we get bored. We get as much PvP in as possible because our schedules don't line up often
   
3. Collectively, our ping is terrible, with the exclusion of the relative I referred to (whom is stateside, but still queues with us so we have 8)

[Szaveth]

Also note, we are all on TS together—when you guys queued their team they said they'd give it a shot anyway, and they got wrecked. I know for a fact that they are good PvPers, we PVPed in wow together for years. At least when we queue against each other we're at an equal disadvantage. We were trying to get more PvP in, when we queued with your team. I personally didn't want to give you guys the illusion that you were actually beating us that easily—we aren't that bad, the ping difference is just a huge hindrance. So yes, we stood mid and let you guys kill us which was for our own ego; I'm sure you'd do it to if the roles were reversed because its frustrating.
We tried queueing more, because like I said we don't get to often, and they got you guys again. I'm pretty sure they just left that match. After that we didn't queue anymore because we kept getting you guys, and its no fun to watch your team die before it even looks like the other team has used 1 GCD

[Szaveth]

If you guys had a second+ of ping and we had under 100ms we'd be sweeping your team too


Again, like I said before its really messed up to post stuff like that before asking the person/people you're accusing—you didn't even make an attempt; if I was going to publicly accuse you of something that would get you banned, I'd at least give you that respect. It really screws up both my own and my FC's reputation when we haven't done anything against the rules

If its a problem with the system, that's one thing, and I could understand that; but don't treat me or my friends like criminals in the process of you pointing out a broken system

[FREEHURP]

cool story bro

[JzBen]

Your story would hold more water if not for the fact of the near 50/50 win rate up until the guy goes on to win 45 out of his next 47 matches. Which is where im guessing you guys kept switching up the teams for maximum gains. His 2 losses in this period im also guessing came against this Balmung team. Very suspicious dont you think?