Tournament Cheating on Balmung

[HakuroDK]

I was participating in the latest tournament for Triple Triad, and when I completed all of my matches (I was playing against NPCs, so my score isn't nearly high enough to get first anyway), but when I checked the leaderboards--again, this is the very first day of the tournament--I noticed this:



Here are two individuals participating in the tournament, currently holding 1st and 2nd Place, with the exact same last name and second place has over 4000 points despite having only 14 wins the entire tournament. First names and partial last names are redacted to prevent player shaming.

But I just wanted to bring this to the attention of someone who can do something about this practice and to see if there are others who have noticed similar things on their servers.

[Duuude007]

It is too common.

People are using alt accounts to get their mules incredibly high scores by forfeiting on their main. The resulting rewards easily push alts into high scores others can never get, and then they can get in 60 card range with ease. Using this, they can forfeit with the alt the next tourney, giving their main high odds at placing, pushing legitimate competitors off the top 20.

The more people are aware of this im sure will compel others to cheat... but at least maybe then SE will do something to fix it.

[CompSci88]

Don't worry, the guy is very unlikely to be on top 3 at the end. Top 10 at the best since 5647 is a pretty low score.

[HakuroDK]

Don't worry, the guy is very unlikely to be on top 3 at the end. Top 10 at the best since 5647 is a pretty low score.

I'm less concerned with the guy in 1st and I'm more concerned with the guy in 2nd. Namely because the guy in 2nd has 4196 points with 14 wins. Seemed like a very obvious exploit.

[Shinun]

I'm less concerned with the guy in 1st and I'm more concerned with the guy in 2nd. Namely because the guy in 2nd has 4196 points with 14 wins. Which means, if he's honestly cheating his way through, has only ever played 14 games on that character, and will play more as the days go on.

No, he played 45 games he only won 14 of those. He's not playing anymore games in this tournament. Though it already completed it's job as a feeder

[CompSci88]

I'm less concerned with the guy in 1st and I'm more concerned with the guy in 2nd. Namely because the guy in 2nd has 4196 points with 14 wins. Which means, if he's honestly cheating his way through, has only ever played 14 games on that character, and will play more as the days go on.

Nah, he has already played all his matches. He won 14 out of 45. He was probably a dummy for the current 1st place.

[Duuude007]

I saw another guy with 3000 points and only 1 win out of 45.

Seriously if SE can't see how exploited that is, they never will.

[Archadius]

If the MGP payout for the top spots wasn't so ridiculous, we wouldn't see such horrible exploits. The idea of providing a decent MGP payout based on accumulated points, as well as the distribution of platinum packs... was a good idea! But cheaters like this won't start to fade until the MGP payout for the top is nerfed to the ground. To be honest, the tournaments should be for avid TT players, and MGP doesn't really need to be involved at all. If they took away the big MGP bonus (keeping everyone's bonus at around 20k +/- 5k-ish based on overall points), and just left the top spots for "guaranteed to get the tournament card" plus maybe an extra platinum pack... It would make a world of difference. But alas...

[RobinRethiel]

I'm less concerned with the guy in 1st and I'm more concerned with the guy in 2nd. Namely because the guy in 2nd has 4196 points with 14 wins. Seemed like a very obvious exploit.

Looks like a lot of draws. 4200 points is really not much. That's 93 points per game. You should be more in the range of 110 points if you want to get a good placement.

No, he played 45 games he only won 14 of those. He's not playing anymore games in this tournament. Though it already completed it's job as a feeder

Can't be a feeder. Way too much points. As a feeder you would be more around 1500 points and lower. You can't feed people with draws. - Okay, he MAY have fed with a few games, sure- like all the others in the lists and everyone else.

[Shinun]

Snip

No it's a feeder. This week is 45 games. I know a few feeders and their points are ~4k where the people who are getting fed are in the 5600-5800 range. The difference is noticeable if your feeder is in the ~1500 range your looking at last week ~4k points this week ~5.1-5.2k, if your feeder is in the 4k like that screenshot your looking at ~4.4-4.6k last week, 5600-5800 this week.

System is still broken but it is what it is for now