Let’s Try Something Different

@BlazinsZ  shared a very interesting insight basically observing that too much focus is on complaining about cheating in the forum and he’s correct. No one (to my knowledge) is satisfied with what’s happening today to address the hacking and cheating issues (including EA). This thread was started to offer an alternative method to address the cheating issue and yes it’s focused on CoM but the basic concept can be used for war games by simply changing parameters that are monitored. I was always taught that if you bring a problem to the table, you best bring a solution (or at least the start of one)...this is simply the start of one and I would appreciate insight and suggestions to make it more viable and reliable so that EA can run with it. Thanks.

High score assighnments I saw this week were...

-launch 3 disasters 3,000pts 18h

-launch 3 rare attack 3,000pts 6h

-produce 9 omega canister 2,700 1d12h

-produce 16 tennis racket 2,400 4h15min

-produce 9 pingpong table 2,520 4h45min

The total score above are 13,620 pts and it's totall time is 69h (2d21h) if you complete them right before the time limit. But if you use greencash, you can shorten producing time and those can be done in less than 10mins. If you do all those 2500-3000 pts assignment, you can score 180,000 - 220,000 total includes 15 golden tickets.

Is it possible? Yes, if you have tons of green cash.

Is it worth to spend that much greencash? No, grand prize in megalo is 2,000 and you have to spend more.

Who does that? We dont know. Hackers? Super competitive and rich players?

That score is possible for legit players if they do lots of upgrade zone assighnments too. We dont know what assighnment other players have, we dont know if they are spending greencash and speed tokens. We can monitor their score and how fast they score points but we never know if they are playing legit way or not, only EA knows. So we report suspicious players, that's the only and the best thing we can do against CoM hackers...

Not playing, not spending is the only viable option.   We try for fun knowing what we will find...  

I share the attitude @PinnacleValley  , the conflict that I think EA has regarding this, are the all shortcuts the game have and the specific situations.

The shorcuts: I mean the all green cash you can use, you want a chair? you have the instant option. So, assuming a ''time'' can work against players that use real money, and I don't think EA want to risk those players designing an automated system that ban you if you do a task in minutes. 

That's the problem. Actually, I even use 800 or 1000 cash if the prize is 2000, I'm still in green numbers. As long as I win first place, is worth it, first, you win the prize and second, you hit your opponent that probably is going to fight you again next week, but he lost his investment and you are now better prepared, so you will probably beat him again next week. This makes you very powerful actually, in my CoM there is a player who has been winning first place, it is more than obvious, that he must have 8000 cash and can bet more than you, there comes a time that it is not possible to remove him from there, especially whether you've been winning second or third place during those weeks. like 700 or less cash for several weeks. You may think you are prepared with 700 cash, but your enemy can use 800 cash in a contest (since he/she won 2000), you cannot, and obviously he or she want to maintain you unprepared.

The specific situations: I know you play CoM Pinnacle, you know how it works, we never start a task if we don't have it ready, here is the other problem, first you produce all the furniture, and once the 8 pieces of furniture are ready, you start the task and collect the furniture, you complete it in less than 10 seconds. How would EA know that you were previously preparing for the task? Same with all other tasks, I first make sure that I have the cargo ready and the 6 buildings destroyed by Vu ready, I start the task of getting 4 golden keys, and then I repair the buildings, completing the task in less a minute, after that, I'll start Airport, when I have them ready, I send the first one, see an ad or pay 20 cash, and send the other, if I am missing a chair, I ask for it in my club, (They are really addicted to the game, if nobody answers I chat them on discord, in a few minutes they share the item I need, They do it because I am quite friendly and I always help them too, hehehe), after that, you'll start a launch 1 dud task, you do it really fast and problably if you keep getting lucky, you can get a lot of points.

But of course there comes a time you can't do more tasks, for example the cannister, I hate those, but again, you can have 3 ( I also do this) ready to pick up (the smaller, 30 mins to open), still take time but you can always use green cash. 

So this is where this fails, really if EA puts a system that bans for this, many honest players who only prepare their tasks before, save about 800 cash or players who pay money, may fall into the bag, a player who pays real money and is treated as a cheater, leaves, and doesn't return, I highly doubt EA would risk losing them by mistakes.

But the suggestion is still good!, If it not all automated, but that it sends an alarm and someone takes a look at the account, if someone made so many points in a short time, then doing a review and discarding would be great.
There are also cases that are too stupid, like in the last hour a player makes 120k points and they had nothing (This happened once in my CoM, the player was not even on the list, in the last hour he appeared out of nowhere making many points.) , it can still get it with green cash, but it should raise the alarm.

But seriously EA need to detect the program and modified files camouflaging themselves as healthy, to address these problems is the best they can do.

@BlazinsZ Very interesting insight and yes I plan and organize multiple tasks running at the same time and do not select the assignment until I have at least part of the requirements complete, I seldom use simcash and have accumulated a bit more than the 8k. I understand your approach and completely agree it’s viable and practical (most importantly legal) as long as you make more money than you spend...

I readily concede this aspect makes it more difficult to track but it’s only a variable and I believe it should be red flagged and monitored accordingly...it should level out over the course of the contest. The 120k in an hour or the 20k in 15 minutes is the real issue and how some individuals consistently get a disproportionate amount of high point assignments tells the tale. I recognize what I’ve suggested is far from perfect or complete...it’s a staring point toward building a solution which is a substantial advancement from where we are today. Thanks for your feedback, it’s always enlightening. 

@Mahler1989 The ads for cargo ship and airplane are only for non-pay players. Also non-pay player get ads for region HQ and factory production.

-factory production ad (8 factories per day, it resets 00:00 everyday)

-1 ad for the randomely chosen delivery from the follwing option (as far as I know I dont see any pattern)

*cargo ship ad 

*london/tokyo/paris delivery ad

*regeion HQ ad 

Probably all your team members are paying for the game? It's weird non-pay players have advantage for these ads, espesially 8 factory ads and regeion ad helps the CoM tasks alot. I think it's "you want to skip ads? pay and be a premuim member" thing. But I want to pay to see those ads. 

@Mahler1989  Yes, sometimes I have the option to watch an ad and then instantly I can do the next airport instead of waiting 12-16 hours. ''sometimes'' is key because sometimes it doesn't show up, I guess I've used too much the other ads that appear above some buildings,

I also have this option when I skip a task in CoM, you know you have to wait a few minutes to see it, well I can see an ad and it appears immediately, I don't know if you can't see this either.

I also get those ads in factories but in contrast to the ads in Airport these are incredibly annoying and random so then, kinda useless. You put one seed and get the Ad, or you just are checking your factories and suddenly one of them triggers the ad in a item you aren't interested in get that fast. They are random and you do not have a button to decide whether to see them or not, those of the factories are surprising, invasive and many of them you cannot even advance.

ads for airport are really good and a powerful advantage in CoM, so i can feel it sounds kind of unfair to no have this feature. 

I don't know where @SummitVista3310  got that information but I can confirm that in fact I am a non-pay player. not because I'm one of those stone-headed people who says it doesn't pay in games (I've done it in others) but I've never actually seen anything interesting in Simcity Buildit to pay for.

I prefer to get my cards in wars in the normal way, and the rest they offer you is a paltry amount of coins, some golden keys (really few) and some buildings that I don't really need because I have everything covered in my city, and also I have enough green cash that I won from CoM. The other is the ''season''  But from the first day I realized that you pay and do not receive anything, you still have to climb to get the prizes and from the beginning I saw that getting all the prizes was too much time and effort, so if you have a busy month you practically lost your money, you actually pay to enter the contest likely. It's not something you asked for but that's my justification, lol. 

btw, even if you paid in the game, you should therefore have the button, it sounds very hateful that EA watches your movements and makes things more difficult for you, so that you pay more, it is not very nice, right?

@BlazinsZ When we start seeing those ads on facorites we noticed some teammate has that and some not. And we arrived at that answer that non-pay players has that ads.

BTW, the factory ads arent ramdom. I first thought it triggers the ads how many you tap the game screen. But it's actually minuites. It resets 00:00 everyday, 8 ads per day. When you tap the factory ad starts. It takes 2-3 mins till you can watch next ad. Every times the interval gets longer. So I always pick one factory and produce animal feed or electric parts, and I dont touch other factories until I watch all the 8 ads. Very convinient for factory CoM tasks!

But yeah. Wish we could chose when/which factories we watch ads for, like other ads. And pay-palyers should be able to watch those ads. In most of other games you pay to remove ads, I think it's the same theory but it makes the game difficut which is funny. Im non- pay but I'd pay if I can add 10 more factory ads.