Alliance exploit that Anet should be aware of.

[Evenge.4067]

5 hours ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

You're honestly not trying to sell that some people having several alts for the same guild in different places is something new that happened with WR? Because that has been around for years on servers.

 

Sure it's a new spin on it to take advantage of the alliance groupings.

Not selling anything. Just pointing out how guilds can still bandwagon to more dominant links.

[Cuks.8241]

Yeah this was obvious. But I'm doubtful it will be as prominent as server transfers. Its still a bigger investment to buy all the expansion (at least some), level up and gear all those characters. And with new expansions this will just require more investment.

Also I think many players are heavily attached to their main account. Right now wvw for veterans just doesnt bring any rewards. Maybe they could introduce unique seasonal rewards (cosmetics, guild hall and/or homestead stuff, titles...) so playing on alt would mean you miss them on main.

[joneirikb.7506]

I'm not sure if there is a way to fix it, at least not realistically.

In theory what they would have to do is map out what accounts belongs to what player, and link all of them together to the same server. Basically making a sub-selection to the WR system that all accounts from the same player gets placed on the same team, which would then have to be placed above the guild selection, and would then have to most likely also restrict the max guild size, or that would likely also stop working as well (people borrowing away their alt accounts). And all over become a big problem for a lot of normal players that just has 2 accounts to play with some friends all over the place.

And yeah this was predicted early on, but it's still more work/effort for players to do (especially organised) than transfers was, so there's automatically going to be less of it than transferring in the old system. So I still see that as an improvement.

[Tenga.5867]

14 hours ago, Evenge.4067 said:

We have heard of a well known WvW commander (and Streamer), who has been known previously have spy alt accounts on every server, to be now exploiting alliance links with his guildies. 

Here is what is happening:

The core of this commander's main guild have also all made 3 or 4 alternate accounts on other servers and formed up 3 or 4 different alliance guilds. By doing this, each of these different alternate alliance guilds would mostly fall into different world links. Then they can pick or choose whichever link that they find most dominant and favorable and play their characters on that link. 

By doing this they have exploited the "system " and bandwagoned to stronger worlds. This also leaves weaker worlds even less populated.  😡 

thats not an exploit, its just having multiple accounts in different teams to have content covered if matchups are dogwater on other account(s).

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

14 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Data analysis for atypical patterns of play.  It's kind of like how a service provider can detect other types of ban-able player behaviors.  They don't have to ban the accounts, just place them all on the same team 🙂

Yeah, I really don't wanna end up on a link with 20% of it's intended player count because they're all alt accounts tho (speaking as a solo roamer). Sure I don't play with others often, but I'd like the option. 

[Junkpile.7439]

2 hours ago, Tenga.5867 said:

thats not an exploit, its just having multiple accounts in different teams to have content covered if matchups are dogwater on other account(s).

Yes totally valid reason ruin match-up or two. 🤦‍♂️

[TheIceman.1039]

In addition, those Commanders who come to command for a while on your side and then immediately switch to the opposite side to start their own Guild run there.

The solution would be to allow only 2 accounts to be used in wvw. One NA the other EU. This is certainly also difficult to control, but it would certainly limit the use of alt accounts en masse. In addition, playing two opposing sides in the same week could be banned.

It seems to me that alt accounts started to be used en masse when the relinking length decreased to one month.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

Just now, TheIceman.1039 said:

In addition, those Commanders who come to command for a while on your side and then immediately switch to the opposite side to start their own Guild run there.

The solution would be to allow only 2 accounts to be used in wvw. One NA the other EU. This is certainly also difficult to control, but it would certainly limit the use of alt accounts en masse. In addition, playing two opposing sides in the same week could be banned.

It seems to me that alt accounts started to be used en masse when the relinking length decreased to one month.

Problem with that is, what do they do if both you, your spouse and your kids are all into WvW and all want to play together? The only realistic way of limiting someone to two WvW accounts is through IP addresses, and given most of us probably know couples that met through the game at this point, how do we think that is gonna play out?

That's also assuming that they have the tech to track that kind of thing in real time without lagging the servers harder than they already do. 

[TheIceman.1039]

The solution could be to create a family package.

[Tenga.5867]

1 hour ago, Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

Yeah, I really don't wanna end up on a link with 20% of it's intended player count because they're all alt accounts tho (speaking as a solo roamer). Sure I don't play with others often, but I'd like the option. 

 

1 hour ago, Junkpile.7439 said:

Yes totally valid reason ruin match-up or two. 🤦‍♂️

you both are upset of the wrong reasons. yes the alliance system is trash. but its not because of ppl having alt acc on diff teams when their other accs lack content. they are not playing on every acc at the same time and they also do not take any other players possible spots if the alliance limit isnt even reached. and even then they could just solo join ANY team they want every reshuffle without selecting beforehand. those players do coun't less since their activity is not like the one from a "full time wvw main acc" player.

[Goosekilla.2796]

Honestly all the people complaining about spies I kinda say it's a war game... Spies are gonna be a thing, and that's ok. 

The real problem is the account hopping that really kills matchup balance. It is against the terms of service, so anyone caught doing it absolutely could be banned. I agree with the person who said the beat solution is probably just improving their algorithms for detecting abnormal account use and growing those in a way that neutralizes the ability to actually game this system. That and yeah, maybe enforcing some WvW involvement in order to change WvW guild.

[Chaba.5410]

4 hours ago, Tenga.5867 said:

thats not an exploit, its just having multiple accounts in different teams to have content covered if matchups are dogwater on other account(s).

Playing only sometimes on other alts instead of regularly leads to the higher chance that your alts get placed together since more accounts with lower average play hours can be considered equal to less accounts with higher play hours.  You'll make the dogwater yourself at that point.

[Chaba.5410]

50 minutes ago, Tenga.5867 said:

and even then they could just solo join ANY team they want every reshuffle without selecting beforehand.

Are you sure you understand how the system works?  Being able to join any team is only a thing for brand new accounts and accounts that have not played in over 1 or 2 months.  All active accounts get placed automatically onto a team every reshuffle.

Edited August 17 by Chaba.5410

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

3 hours ago, Tenga.5867 said:

 

you both are upset of the wrong reasons. yes the alliance system is trash. but its not because of ppl having alt acc on diff teams when their other accs lack content. they are not playing on every acc at the same time and they also do not take any other players possible spots if the alliance limit isnt even reached. and even then they could just solo join ANY team they want every reshuffle without selecting beforehand. those players do coun't less since their activity is not like the one from a "full time wvw main acc" player.

I think you misread, I'm not upset at the current state of alliances at all. I was simply saying that the suggestion put forward by the person I quoted will create it's own set of issues. 

Edited August 17 by Jugglemonkey.8741

[Evenge.4067]

On 8/16/2024 at 5:05 PM, SweetPotato.7456 said:

You complain like this is new, when I was still on TC there were many players there who logs into their alt accounts to flip everything on TC and than logs back into their TC accounts to flip back what they just flip on their alt. /shrug. I call them out only to be labelled a troll.  

KARMA  lmao

You've always had a great imagination. 

[One more for the road.8950]

On 8/17/2024 at 3:16 PM, TheIceman.1039 said:

In addition, those Commanders who come to command for a while on your side and then immediately switch to the opposite side to start their own Guild run there.

The solution would be to allow only 2 accounts to be used in wvw. One NA the other EU. This is certainly also difficult to control, but it would certainly limit the use of alt accounts en masse. In addition, playing two opposing sides in the same week could be banned.

It seems to me that alt accounts started to be used en masse when the relinking length decreased to one month.

And how do you imagine they could pull off this in a legal way? Paying full price for a game and not able to play a part that's included in the price?

[Mistwraithe.3106]

On 8/18/2024 at 2:38 AM, Tenga.5867 said:

 

you both are upset of the wrong reasons. yes the alliance system is trash. but its not because of ppl having alt acc on diff teams when their other accs lack content. they are not playing on every acc at the same time and they also do not take any other players possible spots if the alliance limit isnt even reached. and even then they could just solo join ANY team they want every reshuffle without selecting beforehand. those players do coun't less since their activity is not like the one from a "full time wvw main acc" player.

No, you are completely missing the point. Any attempt at creating even teams is broken once a small percentage of players are able to change team.

Try making sport teams. Take 20 people and split them into two teams of 10, maybe even look at their game history and abilities so they are reasonably balanced in terms of skill. Then allow just 10% of the players to change teams. Assuming they want to win you are going to have an 11 vs 9 or 12 vs 8 game every time (getting worse once some of the outnumbered losing team give up on the clearly unbalanced game and go home).

Balance is destroyed, just like that.

But I suspect that deep down you probably realise that. I imagine your protestations are because you have multiple alts and switch between them regularly and just don't want to recognize that YOU are the one damaging WvW...

[joneirikb.7506]

5 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

No, you are completely missing the point. Any attempt at creating even teams is broken once a small percentage of players are able to change team.

Try making sport teams. Take 20 people and split them into two teams of 10, maybe even look at their game history and abilities so they are reasonably balanced in terms of skill. Then allow just 10% of the players to change teams. Assuming they want to win you are going to have an 11 vs 9 or 12 vs 8 game every time (getting worse once some of the outnumbered losing team give up on the clearly unbalanced game and go home).

Balance is destroyed, just like that.

But I suspect that deep down you probably realise that. I imagine your protestations are because you have multiple alts and switch between them regularly and just don't want to recognize that YOU are the one damaging WvW...

Responding mostly because I hate sports comparisons to WvW. But basically with the shifting population due to timezone activity and player morale, WvW is never going to be able to become "balanced" in that way. So by that definition then "Fairweathers" is a bigger problem than people jumping on alt accounts or even transferring back in ye olde days. As after getting your zerg killed about 2 times, half of the players just leave wvw, that's always going to affect numbers far more than Alt accounts ever will.

I do think that organised mass use of alt accounts CAN be a problem, but it's not going to be a systematic problem to the same degree that oldschool transfer "Band-wagon" could be (not talking just single guild transfers here, but a proper band-wagon, when 2-4 organised guilds transferred together and dragged with them other players, and basically took over a server).

[TheIceman.1039]

13 hours ago, One more for the road.8950 said:

And how do you imagine they could pull off this in a legal way? Paying full price for a game and not able to play a part that's included in the price?

Simple, Anet makes a new rule that only applies to WvW. Or you want to claim that if you buy an extra account, you can ignore all the rules because you have already paid for it.

[One more for the road.8950]

1 minute ago, TheIceman.1039 said:

Simple, Anet makes a new rule that only applies to WvW. Or you want to claim that if you buy an extra account, you can ignore all the rules because you have already paid for it.

Aaaaand how would Anet know who had an account from before?

[urd.8306]

What?