Exploitation of CP bonus

Good day,

I am taking this time to cast light upon a potential avenue for exploitation of the CP bonus...one that I think may have been utilized recently.

Specifically, I suspect that one or more individuals created and logged into multiple Dark accounts which led to severely reducing the CP bonus.

I will not pretend to know whether such person(s) would have been from the Light or Dark faction...or have any affiliation with those factions at all, but I do believe that it may have occurred.

On Wednesday, 8/6/14, I saw that 220+ (223 I believe) Dark players had logged in the day previous (8/5/14) and the CP bonus was modest, with the Light side outfighting the Dark Faction. On Thursday (today), I saw that 320 Dark players had logged in the day previous (8/6/14).

This is odd for a number of reasons: 1) I do not believe the Dark population has exceeded 300 since the inception of the CP bonus, 2) the Dark population had been on a downward trajectory in population (or stagnant at best), 3) the Light population did not have a similar increase.

This does not in itself prove anything, but it is suspicious. If it is occurring, it is a violation of the rules:

• Use more than one account per game world, or share accounts with any other player on any game world they may play. Each player has the option to reset his account max. 2 times and start over, but under no circumstances can a player use multiple accounts to play on a game world.

• Exploit any bug or game mechanic which could provide an unfair advantage to you over the rest of the users of Battle Conquest. Sharing an exploit of any type, with other Battle Conquest players is forbidden. You are expected to report the bug or method of exploitation to the Battle Conquest staff immediately.

Whether it occurred or even if the perpetrator were to be caught and banned, it does not take away from the fact that this form of cheating is easily replicated...to either give your own faction a (larger) bonus or reduce the other faction's bonus.

I believe that this form of exploitation can be mitigated if some changes are made to the CP bonus mechanism:

1) Do not include players with less than X Fame
2a) Do not include players that fail to win at least one normal battle on that day OR
2b) Create a mechanism (such as paying a tax, in resources, for their contributions) by which the Factions can remove individuals that are not fighting (only farming/building) from the CP bonus calculation.

Additionally, I believe that the rankings should have an additional segment added to it to show the names of players that logged on (were 'active') on the previous day. It may be the Faction's responsibility to engage new players and encourage fighting, but we cannot do that when such individuals are effectively invisible.

Yep, it is a little bit "strange"...

As already, several times requested:
1. Take out the farmers

I would go one step further for 2nd:
2. Only count players, which won > 5 battles/day.

3rd could maybe:
3. Only count players, which won > 5 battles/day at min. 3 days during the past seven days.

9999: Totally fine with your first 2 suggestions, but not your 3rd suggestion. For instance, I just had a 5-day vacation and didn't play BC at all. Came back, and started back in on my 20+ fights/day. According to suggestion 3 my contribution would not count for a while simply because I didn't play over a vacation. And I know life gets in the way of many people playing as much as they'd like, but that shouldn't diminish their contribution.

Totally fine with the other 2 suggestions, though.

Ysosad Run said system count login, if its like that than each time you refresh page its +1. I don't believe we have more than 300 active players.
I agree with 9999 that system should count players that are fighting not farming and should count each player once a day.

Can we even trust the numbers? 100 extra logins seem crazy if you ask me, couldn't it be that the algorithm somehow messed up again? Isn't this the most likely cause?!

We need the dev team to look at this, 100 extra players logging in one day only to disappear the next day is very odd!

Strachu wrote:

Ysosad Run said system count login, if its like that than each time you refresh page its +1. I don't believe we have more than 300 active players.
I agree with 9999 that system should count players that are fighting not farming and should count each player once a day.

Hi Strachu,

There was a bit of confusion for a moment, but Rune clarified that it is unique logins. If you were to log-in 5000 times today, you would still only be counted once.

Boboknack wrote:

Can we even trust the numbers? 100 extra logins seem crazy if you ask me, couldn't it be that the algorithm somehow messed up again? Isn't this the most likely cause?!

We need the dev team to look at this, 100 extra players logging in one day only to disappear the next day is very odd!

It is possible that there was a glitch in the system, it was not something I had considered at all...says something of what I think of people, I suppose

ysosad wrote:

Strachu wrote:

Ysosad Run said system count login, if its like that than each time you refresh page its +1. I don't believe we have more than 300 active players.
I agree with 9999 that system should count players that are fighting not farming and should count each player once a day.

Hi Strachu,

There was a bit of confusion for a moment, but Rune clarified that it is unique logins. If you were to log-in 5000 times today, you would still only be counted once.

Boboknack wrote:

Can we even trust the numbers? 100 extra logins seem crazy if you ask me, couldn't it be that the algorithm somehow messed up again? Isn't this the most likely cause?!

We need the dev team to look at this, 100 extra players logging in one day only to disappear the next day is very odd!

It is possible that there was a glitch in the system, it was not something I had considered at all...says something of what I think of people, I suppose

"Well the numbers don't lie" I remember RuneSlayer saying, but these numbers seem way off?

1. Most likely this is a glitch. While I understand you're not implying anything, the fact that Light could organize having 100 extra Dark accounts in a single day is quite hilarious. Dark has always been way more together that Light ever could be.

2. Dark is the only side where there are players who quit because of not being able to beat Light. Most of Light's players that went inactive did so because of the merc AI armies and the numerous inter guild wars. I think there is a slight possibility that a large number of players came back just to see how the new changes affected the game. No offense intended to the Dark players out there.

3. Checking something like this is pretty easy, all Rune has to do is look at the numbers of accounts created in say a 2-3 day window before and after to see if it is substantially above average or lopsided in anyway.

4. There should be a mechanism in place in order to filter what constitutes an "Active" player. I'd say 100 CPs in a single day is a reasonable cut off to be counted as an active player. Anything more and new players wont be counted at all, anything less an it makes it pay to make multiple accounts. 100 because with a brand new player, getting 100 CPs in a day would be somewhat difficult and time consuming enough to make it not worth having multiple accounts.

Metalsiagon wrote:

2. Dark is the only side where there are players who quit because of not being able to beat Light. It would be odd for the Light side to leave because of not being able to beat Light.

4. There should be a mechanism in place in order to filter what constitutes an "Active" player. I'd say 100 CPs in a single day is a reasonable cut off to be counted as an active player. Anything more and new players wont be counted at all, anything less an it makes it pay to make multiple accounts. 100 because with a brand new player, getting 100 CPs in a day would be somewhat difficult and time consuming enough to make it not worth having multiple accounts. I'm fine with a reasonable cutoff, but Rune has said that everyone should be counted because they contribute. I don't disagree exactly, BUT if we can offset that 'contribution' then they have had 0 impact...they can reasonably be taken out of the equation entirely

Anyway, it should be realized how easy it would be for me to make a few dozen accounts or more, log into the Light side and attempt to boost the CP bonus to the max. I won't do it, but the point is I could...and it would be easy.

Then Light and Dark start competing by seeing who can make the most alt accounts without being 'caught' and Rune trying to track down the cheaters to ban them.

ysosad wrote:

It would be odd for the Light side to leave because of not being able to beat Light.

You know what I mean

ysosad wrote:

I'm fine with a reasonable cutoff, but Rune has said that everyone should be counted because they contribute. I don't disagree exactly, BUT if we can offset that 'contribution' then they have had 0 impact...they can reasonably be taken out of the equation entirely

Every CP contributed should matter, but there are a lot of players who don't battle. That said, an active player above a certain fame number should count even if they don't battle because they can contribute large numbers of resources if they farm that can help others.

ysosad wrote:

Anyway, it should be realized how easy it would be for me to make a few dozen accounts or more, log into the Light side and attempt to boost the CP bonus to the max. I won't do it, but the point is I could...and it would be easy.

I think you're discarding the substantial amount of time that would be required to do that, you pretty much would lose any bonus you get by logging into each of those accounts when you could be battling on a primary account.

ysosad wrote:

Then Light and Dark start competing by seeing who can make the most alt accounts without being 'caught' and Rune trying to track down the cheaters to ban them.

Realistically there are people who have alt accounts out there, but it is pretty well policed by the Devs. The bonus isn't that good to warrant that kind of effort. I'd personally hope that the hammer would fall swiftly on anyone caught doing that. Most of the obvious alts out there now are just parked on guilds to keep them "alive" or are people who stopped playing before the merge and know nothing about it.

We should try and push for a cleaning up of the inactive guilds parked on the list as well as dropping inactive players off of the rankings with a certain period of inactivity.

Metalsiagon wrote:

ysosad wrote:

It would be odd for the Light side to leave because of not being able to beat Light.

You know what I mean

ysosad wrote:

I'm fine with a reasonable cutoff, but Rune has said that everyone should be counted because they contribute. I don't disagree exactly, BUT if we can offset that 'contribution' then they have had 0 impact...they can reasonably be taken out of the equation entirely

Every CP contributed should matter, but there are a lot of players who don't battle. That said, an active player above a certain fame number should count even if they don't battle because they can contribute large numbers of resources if they farm that can help others.

ysosad wrote:

Anyway, it should be realized how easy it would be for me to make a few dozen accounts or more, log into the Light side and attempt to boost the CP bonus to the max. I won't do it, but the point is I could...and it would be easy.

I think you're discarding the substantial amount of time that would be required to do that, you pretty much would lose any bonus you get by logging into each of those accounts when you could be battling on a primary account.

ysosad wrote:

Then Light and Dark start competing by seeing who can make the most alt accounts without being 'caught' and Rune trying to track down the cheaters to ban them.

Realistically there are people who have alt accounts out there, but it is pretty well policed by the Devs. The bonus isn't that good to warrant that kind of effort. I'd personally hope that the hammer would fall swiftly on anyone caught doing that. Most of the obvious alts out there now are just parked on guilds to keep them "alive" or are people who stopped playing before the merge and know nothing about it.

We should try and push for a cleaning up of the inactive guilds parked on the list as well as dropping inactive players off of the rankings with a certain period of inactivity.

Yes, i have advocated this idea before, rankings are basically a massive graveyard of inactive players and must be an unwelcome sight for new players to look at!   

Metalsiagon wrote:

ysosad wrote:

I'm fine with a reasonable cutoff, but Rune has said that everyone should be counted because they contribute.

Every CP contributed should matter, but there are a lot of players who don't battle. That said, an active player above a certain fame number should count even if they don't battle because they can contribute large numbers of resources if they farm that can help others.

Dunno how it's on lightside, but darks don't have too many such people who keep donating resources or being there just for res and refusing to battle. They can give a bit of res, woohoo, they're still lazy though, why count them and serious hitters equally. A combatant will have more res to help others with...

Even based on fame.. some friendly noobish person can donate more than a maxed one, and fame can be gained by lvl 25 res buildings, or by barracks/smiths etc, so it's not entirely fair, different potential.

  For a start I'd be curious to see the active number split to those who earned cps and those who haven't. Perhaps there are many noobs with at least one battle. And if suddenly one side gets 100 more noncombatants.. well..   

Metalsiagon wrote:

ysosad wrote:

Anyway, it should be realized how easy it would be for me to make a few dozen accounts or more, log into the Light side and attempt to boost the CP bonus to the max. I won't do it, but the point is I could...and it would be easy.

I think you're discarding the substantial amount of time that would be required to do that, you pretty much would lose any bonus you get by logging into each of those accounts when you could be battling on a primary account.

Time? How do you imagine it works? You can even load a few accs at once, click collect, go away.. few mins max to relogin. Easy, as yso said. And it presumes that the person doesn't want to spend the whole day battling. Now if people were required to earn X cps or do Y battles, it'd become too bothersome.

Metalsiagon wrote:

We should try and push for a cleaning up of the inactive guilds parked on the list as well as dropping inactive players off of the rankings with a certain period of inactivity.

Only rankings? So they can continue playing and no one can see them? Or delete their progress? (there were some discussion about deleting people's progress.. and then they can come back, but won't start again if they have to grind from zero).

---

Oh, bonus again looks similar. At least horses aren't that OP.
It's seriously discouraging that same effort is diluted by so many more people, who just bring average battle count down. Yay.  

Also this - good point.. perhaps.. (except the disappearing part.)

Boboknack wrote:

Can we even trust the numbers? 100 extra logins seem crazy if you ask me, couldn't it be that the algorithm somehow messed up again? Isn't this the most likely cause?!
We need the dev team to look at this, 100 extra players logging in one day only to disappear the next day is very odd!

Right now we have similar amount active of players in both sides, darkies have like 407 and ligthies 430+ then how the hell we have such active players and we only have 1/3 of the cp generated today   seriously is this some kind of bug (how bobo said), or we have many infiltrators/farmers/alts (how ysosad said).

Metalsiagon wrote:

ysosad wrote:

Anyway, it should be realized how easy it would be for me to make a few dozen accounts or more, log into the Light side and attempt to boost the CP bonus to the max. I won't do it, but the point is I could...and it would be easy.

I think you're discarding the substantial amount of time that would be required to do that, you pretty much would lose any bonus you get by logging into each of those accounts when you could be battling on a primary account.

ysosad wrote:

Then Light and Dark start competing by seeing who can make the most alt accounts without being 'caught' and Rune trying to track down the cheaters to ban them.

Realistically there are people who have alt accounts out there, but it is pretty well policed by the Devs. The bonus isn't that good to warrant that kind of effort.

http://prntscr.com/4anx6t

The amount of time to login to these accounts is not so great and what it causes is more substantial than you are giving it credit for...and someone agrees with me based on the printscreen. The benefit of what may have been a 20% bonus being cut to 5% or raised to 40% is not insubstantial...it is the difference between losing multiple regions and taking several.

Also, the Capital armies were impacted now as well, so we get to see that effect for a whole week...which is just fantastic.

The hammer needs to fall faster, the situation rectified immediately. Whatever safe guards are in place, they seem to have failed for yesterday and today. Something else needs to be done.

ysosad wrote:

http://prntscr.com/4anx6t

The amount of time to login to these accounts is not so great and what it causes is more substantial than you are giving it credit for...and someone agrees with me based on the printscreen. The benefit of what may have been a 20% bonus being cut to 5% or raised to 40% is not insubstantial...it is the difference between losing multiple regions and taking several.

I was talking more about creating that many multiple accounts in the first place, but after that initial investment of time, it would be pretty easy to do. You're right on that part. However, with the numbers present in that screenshot even with a max bonus in favor of Dark, Dark still would have been at least 50k CP behind Light. Though the average # of victories does seem kind of fishy.

ysosad wrote:

Also, the Capital armies were impacted now as well, so we get to see that effect for a whole week...which is just fantastic.

The hammer needs to fall faster, the situation rectified immediately. Whatever safe guards are in place, they seem to have failed for yesterday and today. Something else needs to be done.

The bonuses are compounded daily, so it wouldn't be a whole week, but it would directly affect the days operations.

I am curious as to whether or not army CP generation is added into those totals for Dark/Light.

I was just talking about this with Mitrac. I wish I would have kept better track, but yes, in the last few days, the number of dark and light players has grown.. but the dark players have swelled and are now only behind light players by 32?!?! Something is certainly off.
As Yso said, this now affects the capital army strength, while not extreme in effect, it still starts to offset the population difference bonus. Perhaps the capital army's strength should be based on population difference as has been suggested before.

The varying numbers of dark players logging on each day are consistent with the amount of frustration the dark side has to deal with. Sources of the frustration have been pointed out before numerous times and during BC history even the light side has experienced some of the frustration darkies are dealing with. I don't necessarily think, that there is an exploitation of the CP bonus going on now. But as Yso pointed out, it can be very easily exploited.

The population imbalance makes it very hard for the dark side to keep up a good fight for longer than 3-5 days, where some darkies chose to fight very hard in order to make up for the lack of players. Over BC history the dark side has always had the problem that a select few had to try their damn hardest to keep up with the light side. The light side briefly experienced what amount of frustration the lack of a fair fight causes when the minions of AI armies spawned all day long and some lighties who have fought on Olympus can probably very well understand the situation darkies are in now.

The race imbalance is another source of frustration which mainly caused pvp minded darkies to leave the game especially since there is nothing but elves and some humans that do PVP nowadays. Entering PvP q I feel like the last skeleton standing, drowning in a sea of elves. My guess is that the race imbalance results in more darkies losing suicides than lighties do. A hypothesis that could be easily proven or rejected by the devs. But since the devs seem very reluctant to deal with anything related to race balance (even uncapping LIA-movement seems too much), I think they won't release that data (asked for it before and got no reply).

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Strachu wrote:

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Care to Define active?     logged in?    


I don't mean to beat a dead horse ( well maybe a little I am a demon after all ) but people who log in and don't fight should be taken out of the calcs. I like 9999's first two suggestions and am willing to forgo the third.

Dren

Drennalin wrote:

Strachu wrote:

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Care to Define active?     logged in?    


I don't mean to beat a dead horse ( well maybe a little  I am a demon after all )  but people who log in and don't fight should be taken out of the calcs.  I like 9999's first two suggestions and am willing to forgo the third.  

Dren

players who were online for last two days

Everytime the number of dark players grows, the number of victories goes down substantially. I have been 'back' for three days now (my computer exploded) and I have watched it quite simply PLUMMET. Based on the CP I have watched top dark players generate over these three days (yes, I track you all ;P) the 'average' dark player is fighting more, not less. The only way to lower this number is with a whole LOT of '0' victory entries.

Creating alts to manipulate the bonus makes the most sense to me. I don't like beating around the bush. This reeks of cheating, j'accuse, lighties. Seriously, I do. All other proposals in this thread are just excuses and gladhanding. Get your shit sorted out in your faction, lightie vets, you're supposed to be the "good guys"....

Strachu wrote:

Drennalin wrote:

Strachu wrote:

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Care to Define active?     logged in?    


I don't mean to beat a dead horse ( well maybe a little  I am a demon after all )  but people who log in and don't fight should be taken out of the calcs.  I like 9999's first two suggestions and am willing to forgo the third.  

Dren

players who were online for last two days

I will tell you that the UL figure is inflated, if we are trying to list people who actually fight. Aaaaaand back to the PLEA to take farmers out of the equation.

Damastas wrote:

Strachu wrote:

Drennalin wrote:

Strachu wrote:

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Care to Define active?     logged in?    


I don't mean to beat a dead horse ( well maybe a little  I am a demon after all )  but people who log in and don't fight should be taken out of the calcs.  I like 9999's first two suggestions and am willing to forgo the third.  

Dren

players who were online for last two days

I will tell you that the UL figure is inflated, if we are trying to list people who actually fight.  Aaaaaand back to the PLEA to take farmers out of the equation.

Numbers from yesterday's war report Dark/Light, Active players 407/439
Numbers that i counted Dark/Light 115/168
that's all
and - I will tell you that the RG figure is inflated, if we are trying to list people who actually fight!

Strachu wrote:

Strachu wrote:

I've count active players date 07-08.08.2014 r. from "top" guilds.
Dark Faction
UL – 20
DI – 18
Exiled – 38
Fallen – 12
Orsinium – 11
Renegade – 3
Quadrophenia – 1
Maniacs – 4
Shinden – 1
Elf Killers – 1 ( I want to pvp with him)
Olympian – 2
Gateway – 1
Auxilliare – 1
Blackwater – 2
Total 115

Light Faction
RG – 63
GG – 20
Diamond 15
CK – 22
Illyrians – 23
PW – 3
BH – 2
Virulent – 2
Avengers – 11
C Knights – 3
Halls – 1
Light Guardians – 1
Feri – 1
Base – 1
Total 168

Numbers from yesterday's war report Dark/Light, Active players 407/439
Numbers that i counted Dark/Light 115/168
that's all
and - I will tell you that the RG figure is inflated, if we are trying to list people who actually fight!

I get what Strachu is saying, the "active" numbers seem to be off. Looking at the top guilds on both sides and current (most recent) active numbers, there are 292 extra darks and 271 extra lights active outside of the top guilds. As you all know, that throws off the population difference as a percentage by a significant amount.
How Exiled was the most active... yay (fighters) boo (farmers)?!?!

Few other figures:
War Report (WR) D/L:
Victories/Player 1,76/2,67
CP/Player 187/372
Bonus 5%

or
Victories/Player 6,24/6,98
CP/Player 662/973
Bonus 41%
if i'm right