On weekly update of top20 rankings there's always an average of 10 to 13 russian clubs, more than 50%.Congratulations russian players, you're very very very strong!Clubs from the rest of the world, just kneel and honor those gods of strategy, and simply admit that mama-russia is better than all of us. End of the ironic part of the message. Dear EA, will this "joke" be someday resolved?Or do we have to become all cheaters/hackers like they are?Dishonest people should be a little part of a community, and for one successful dishonest man, ten of them should normally been caught by authorities. But on SCBI it looks the perfect opposite: ten successful for everyone caught. This is the only real big problem of this game.It make me laught (or cry) to see how many words have been written about the supposed bubble problem, and how few words about the hacker-clubs problem.Maybe this is one of the reasons why EA did managed to change the war system to cut the bubble, but did not managed to cut hacker-club, as they are far more than before.I wrote about this problem more than a year ago. Answers I get was always that of course, hackers were not good, but bubble was ruining the game. Now the bubble are somehow fixed, so I hope that people will recognize what was and still are the main thing that ruins the game. Take care, stay safe. And -if you can- open your eyes! PS: no disrespect for russian people, I love them as I love people from the rest of the world. I'm just taking the fact that a big part of SCBI hackers comes from Russia.

I just assume that the only version of SCBI you can download in russia/china from the play store is a pre hacked game. They must think the game is so so easy

Dear @PinnacleValley , dear @J6niceL , I didn't meant to offend you, so if I did it I'm sorry and I apologize.I know you both never denied the hacker problem. And some other did complained about hackers, like BlasinZ. But you can't deny that there have been 10 messages about the bubble every 1 about hackers (not talking about YOUR messages, talking about the whole community). That's what I dislike. Neither my club was a "first strategy: let's bubble".But let's analize how wars changed in these years, crossed with the hackers situation. Before the SB: if you were in a good club, bubbling was almost never necessary, as there were a simple rule to avoid bubbles versus active clubs: to stay ahead. With a good start you managed to take the lead, then opposite clubs were forced to unbubble trying to recover. The bubble was boring when you were opposite to inactive clubs, or a strategy for clubs that weren't able in finding other ways to win. And that was painful, of course. Two times painful, as versus those clubs (not hard to recognize) you were sometimes forced to use the bubble too even if your club wasn't a bubbler 'cause if for any reason you'd let them gain enough points then adios amigos.But there were a little positive thing with the bubble: it wasn't impossible beating hackers/cheaters. not easy, but neither impossible. And when it happened it was two times satisfying: for the victory and for having knocked out unlegit players with a legit play.It was rare to fight versus an hacker club unless you weren't in the top500/top1000.Wars rarely exceeded 1M points colletively. After the SB, but before the KO: a good start still was important, but a good club had the possibility to recover almost until the end. Furthermore, inactive clubs weren't a problem anymore. Going asleep was dangerous, as the risk was to wake up and find a big gap to recover, but recovering was possible.That was the good part.The bad part? Hackers seems to have been multipied and multiplied, and now you find them even in lower arenas. In these wars, they can easely exceed 3M points (need some proof?). Far more hard to win versus them, almost impossible, 'cause there's no math saving your club, and with their maxed and unlimited cars and unlimited boosters they simply hammer on your cities from the beginning to the end without a way to stay safe. Even worst, EA changed the matchmaking too: if before the main qualification was a similar ranking (never matched a club with a difference of more than 20-25 ranking points from my club before that change), now other parameters are the first qualifications: club members are the first (if your club has 15 cities, you'll match only clubs from 13 to 17 members); probably some other parameter are involved, like war level of members. But the result is that in any arena, every 2 wars at least one is versus hackers. After the KO: even worst. Nothing has changed from the last point, as many clubs -expecially hackers- don't care about KO and reset it undoming opposite cities. Of course, you'd can try to bubble them all in the last minutes and win the war, but sounds like utopia: maybe it could happen in first wars, but clubs will soon know this case and will pay attention just keeping some freezer and some umbrellas to avoid it. The only thing that changed is that "smart" clubs from different timezones can beat you while you club is sleeping, and that could be frustrating. So someone from your club must always be online, and that's not always easy, expecially for national clubs like mine. So, yes, bubble strategy was a painful thing. But IMO things now are even worst, and I don't know if I'll play SCBI for long times anymore.

@PinnacleValley @J6niceL I'm fully respectful for you both.You both hammered for a legit play lot of times.But then you both told that you prefere playing vs hackers than vs bubblers.Forgive me, but there is a little big difference: Bubblers used a legit rule of the game.A boring rule, but a legit One.Hackers breaks rules and screws every legit player.We can talk for years about how good rules are, but the main thing is: the game must be legit.Players must be legit, not hackers. Then we'll can play about boring rules.So, first thing is to remove unlegit players. Second thing to improve rules.But if/when you say you prefere unlegit players better than legit players that simply tries to win a war using a legit rule, well, sorry, but my respect falls down. 'Cause in this way you avail hackers just for your fun.If you can't accept a rule, if you can't find a way to avoid It with a legit playing, well, you'd Better play another game better than say that hackers are better than Bubblers, that"s a low-minded point of view.Forgive me if I have been drastic with you, as I said I love you both, and I fully respect you both, but sometimes It would be Better to shut up than to Say bs. And to Say that a hacker is funnier than a legit player is a big bs.Peace and love my Friends, forgive me if I have a different opinion. Take care and stay safe.Edit: btw I don't think you're low-minded people, I wouldn't loose time writing messagges to you if I thought so.

@Forgotten_Woods wrote:I just assume that the only version of SCBI you can download in russia/china from the play store is a pre hacked game. They must think the game is so so easyLOL.-------EA officially mentioned the bubble strategy with SB, saying you can now eliminate the team that wins with the shield, so it was a legal and accepted form of gaming, they just changed it. But I agree, both problems need to be resolve, unfortunately I was not so pleased with the way they solved the bubble issue, but I still play the game, but it was certainly boring to fight against a 10 player club where 1 only appeared once in a while, with major attacks, to win the war, too boring and disgusting.Personally, I stopped complaining so much about hackers, because I did it in every comment I wrote in this forum, I felt like I a little intoxicated, so I decided to move to other areas and try to enjoy the game in the ''enjoyable'' areas. I know that there are efforts among the moderators to clarify whenever they can that EA pays a lot of attention to this topic, but without results ... ufff your losing us EA. you can happily get out of here reading that a moderator clarified that they are moving heaven and earth on that topic, then you open the game and lose a whole week in COM for a cheater, that's disappointing enough. There is not even a refund system that tells you: we have discovered that the player was a cheater, we have this reward for having lost all that week, we are sorry. Like when you lost connections for a server fault or something like that, but cheating isn't that case, you lost your progress, fun, and effort, you report, and by the politics, they just say thank you, no more response, you lost that war/com, you say well let's get over it, press war button, and is another cheater club, come on, this is disrespectful for us. At the time I said that the anti cheaters system and the way EA controls them is way long inefficient

Dear @PinnacleValley Last war we did was versus a non hacker club (unlike the 2 before). They were weaker than us, but they fought hard, tried to win, tried to put us KO in the night. Then it was clear they would have tried to do something near the end, as they were all bubbled at 14/15 (arena6). We had a good advantage, about 100K, so the only way for them was to win by KO.So I managed my club in this way: We were 12 versus 12: everyone had to be green, so that opposite club would have had a lot of targets to drop to get their goal and probably forced to go 1vs1. Then, at 29'59" to the end, everyone putted a lvl3 umbrella, so that they'd had to use one SB just to remove umbrella, but leaving us still at 15/15, then impossible to bubble in 1vs1. Then we stay focused on their cities, ready to freeze everyone coming out of the bubble. They tried with 3-4 cities, but we reacted quickly ruining their intention, so they quitted trying and we won.I think that managing this situation is not so hard, but as you told, there must be lot of mayors online.The main problem is not the last hours, but lenght of a war: if attack phase starts at 10PM, it will end at 10AM. It's very difficult to get a large number of mayors online in both times, and it's hard to cover the night. One idea could be to "create" clubs with 2 groups from different timezones: for example, my club is italian, and we're 12 players. With just 6-7 american players we'd easely be covered for the whole war. But I have to convince my mates, they don't like very much this idea, as we already had stranger mayors in our club and somehow it hasn't been a nice experience for them.

Open our eyes | EA Forums

16 Replies

J6niceL
6 years ago
Yes, almost all of the top teams are from Russia. 90% of the russian teams I fought are hackers. China too.
It is strange that EA did not put more effort into looking into the top teams. I don’t understand what is so difficult to retrieve their data and check.
But still, the bubble problem was a problem that needed to be addressed. In fact, at the time where number of bubble lovers exceeded the number of cheaters, cheaters are like the lesser evil in my eyes. In fact, I prefer to fight cheaters at that time. Whenever I see my opponent team is from Russia, China, India, etc, I just focus on farming war stuff. It was better than putting so much resources into fighting the war to get the lead and ended up losing because of those hiding rats.
Of course, I have to admit that now with the rats being crushed, the cheater problem is amplified. With almost every team being cheater team on arena 5. EA, you need to actively ban those teams. They are making you lose money. Imagine the number of customers they chased away. Imagine the number of legit players joining their side to cheat instead of spending money on your game. Do you make and maintain this game for those cheaters to play it for free with no limitations?
Forgotten_Woods
6 years ago
I just assume that the only version of SCBI you can download in russia/china from the play store is a pre hacked game. They must think the game is so so easy
PinnacleValley
6 years ago
@meesfeet Interesting perspective that speaks volumes...same thing is taking place in CoM where you have 2 or 3 individuals averaging 2,200+ points per assignment and finishing 30K + points ahead of everyone else. To put in perspective you would have to complete 60 - 2K poInts & 15 - 3K points assignments and quite frankly I’ve been participating since the beginning and I have never seen anywhere close to 80% of the available assignments that were valued at 2K much less 20% at 3K. It’s blatant and obvious and nothing is being done to correct it. My theory is very simple, it’s like a criminal investigation, EA is not interested in the small offenders who cause so much damage - they’re after the masterminds where they can recover some of their economic losses. It’s understandable but in the process they are allowing the ever so clear cheating to kill the game. If they made me king for a day, my first order of business would be to review the results of every contest and war game and based on simple common sense I would quietly move all offenders to a separate and unique server where I could keep a close eye on their activities and allow natural order back into the contests.
As @J6niceL shared competing against hacker clubs in war games was much more acceptable than facing the run & hide crowd...I didn’t have to hear complaints about I didn’t get to launch my attacks or I’m bored so call me if they ever come out or having to check my phone constantly on a Saturday afternoon while consuming Tylenol for my splitting headache because some...had to catch myself there - simply put I have no respect for cheaters of any kind, but I have disdain for the “strategy” boys. Take care my friend.
J6niceL
6 years ago
@PinnacleValley
You totally nailed it on the pains of fighting “strategists”. You take care too!
meesfeet
6 years ago
@PinnacleValley @J6niceL I'm fully respectful for you both.
You both hammered for a legit play lot of times.
But then you both told that you prefere playing vs hackers than vs bubblers.
Forgive me, but there is a little big difference:
Bubblers used a legit rule of the game.
A boring rule, but a legit One.
Hackers breaks rules and screws every legit player.
We can talk for years about how good rules are, but the main thing is: the game must be legit.
Players must be legit, not hackers. Then we'll can play about boring rules.
So, first thing is to remove unlegit players. Second thing to improve rules.
But if/when you say you prefere unlegit players better than legit players that simply tries to win a war using a legit rule, well, sorry, but my respect falls down. 'Cause in this way you avail hackers just for your fun.
If you can't accept a rule, if you can't find a way to avoid It with a legit playing, well, you'd Better play another game better than say that hackers are better than Bubblers, that"s a low-minded point of view.
Forgive me if I have been drastic with you, as I said I love you both, and I fully respect you both, but sometimes It would be Better to shut up than to Say bs. And to Say that a hacker is funnier than a legit player is a big bs.
Peace and love my Friends, forgive me if I have a different opinion. Take care and stay safe.
Edit: btw I don't think you're low-minded people, I wouldn't loose time writing messagges to you if I thought so.
PinnacleValley
6 years ago
@meesfeet I do understand where you’re coming from and have reported cheaters multiple times over the past few years. I think you may be missing my point so I will try to clarify...our club participated in one war per week (as we all had real lives) starting on Thursday evening and our guys were excited and ready to prepare for battle, once committed there was no turning back - we didn’t know what type opponent we would draw but regardless it was time to go. Ideally you would compete with a team that wanted to participate and regardless of the results we all walked away having a good time. Sometimes you might encounter a cheater (especially when your 3 top players get attacked in the safety of the bubble) but our leadership never made a big deal of it to the club and most folks walked away reasonably happy...yes we reported the situation, but with no tangible evidence nothing was done. Finally on occasion you would run into a bubble team and absolutely no one walked away from those contests happy even though we never lost to a bubble team...I think I clearly shared my pain as President and why I absolutely hated those contests.
While I have never said it was cheating, I will never concede it as a legit strategy - it was simply a game plan that was very selfish and limited in scope. No one is saying cheating is acceptable, but when we were stuck in the unfortunate situation of drawing either a cheater or “strategy” club both @J6niceL and I are in agreement that it was a lot less painful playing a cheater, at least they came to compete. We are not condoning the cheaters at all but I surely am glad the run & hide strategy is dead - legitimate players adapted and the one’s that were not disappeared. Take care.
BlazinsZ
6 years ago
@Forgotten_Woods wrote:
I just assume that the only version of SCBI you can download in russia/china from the play store is a pre hacked game. They must think the game is so so easy
LOL.
-------
EA officially mentioned the bubble strategy with SB, saying you can now eliminate the team that wins with the shield, so it was a legal and accepted form of gaming, they just changed it. But I agree, both problems need to be resolve, unfortunately I was not so pleased with the way they solved the bubble issue, but I still play the game, but it was certainly boring to fight against a 10 player club where 1 only appeared once in a while, with major attacks, to win the war, too boring and disgusting.
Personally, I stopped complaining so much about hackers, because I did it in every comment I wrote in this forum, I felt like I a little intoxicated, so I decided to move to other areas and try to enjoy the game in the ''enjoyable'' areas.
I know that there are efforts among the moderators to clarify whenever they can that EA pays a lot of attention to this topic, but without results ... ufff your losing us EA. you can happily get out of here reading that a moderator clarified that they are moving heaven and earth on that topic, then you open the game and lose a whole week in COM for a cheater, that's disappointing enough.
There is not even a refund system that tells you: we have discovered that the player was a cheater, we have this reward for having lost all that week, we are sorry. Like when you lost connections for a server fault or something like that, but cheating isn't that case, you lost your progress, fun, and effort, you report, and by the politics, they just say thank you, no more response, you lost that war/com, you say well let's get over it, press war button, and is another cheater club, come on, this is disrespectful for us.
At the time I said that the anti cheaters system and the way EA controls them is way long inefficient
J6niceL
6 years ago
@meesfeet
I can’t shake the feeling that I am blamed for the cheaters running amok. I can understand your frustration with cheaters. But you should be pointing your arrow at EA instead.
For one, I had not condoned those cheaters. I didn’t say cheating is good. Saying that fighting cheaters is more fun akin to saying that speeding is more fun than hogging. But both are wrong and dangerous in my eyes and I don’t encourage or endorse speeding at all. The same goes for cheating.
In fact, besides complaining about bubble lovers, I had regularly made sarcastic remarks about taking advantage of cheaters. In fact, it was telling EA, “If you are not going to resolve the cheater issue, I’ll just make full use of them to get war stuff. So who has more to lose? Better act on it soon.”
I would have made the same kind of sarcastic remarks about bubble lovers if I could. But too bad, there is nothing about bubble wars that I could use for this purpose; I could only do usual rant about playing less often. That’s about boring bubble wars are, I can’t even be creative about the complaints about them. Yes, it is more fun to complain about cheaters and read about the complaints on them actually. I mean it. In fact, I truly enjoy your message about the great Russian teams. So is it also wrong of me to say that it’s more fun to talk about cheaters?
Bubble hiding is a problem that affects me more, so I can’t complain about it until the bigger issue of cheaters is resolved? So does this mean I can’t talk about deforestation until world peace is achieved?
Why are Pinnacle and I being blamed for EA’s inaction over cheaters? As if EA is keeping the cheaters for our sakes lol
And Pinnacle had always being very vocal (yet civil) about clamping down on those cheaters. So I’m not sure why you chose to magnify what the words of disdain he had for bubble lovers and ignore what he had said about cheaters. I’m the one who is very blunt and rude in my complaints about bubble lovers, so I’m expecting backlash. So problem on that. I thrive on that at times lol But I replied to you because I still respect you. Just because he and I share the same dislike for bubble lovers doesn’t mean he endorsed everything I said, you know. It is more of he empathized with my pain of fighting them. Just like how I liked some of your posts doesn’t mean I agreed with the entirety of them. Anyway, I think you own him an apology for maligning him like that.
meesfeet
6 years ago

Dear @PinnacleValley , dear @J6niceL , I didn't meant to offend you, so if I did it I'm sorry and I apologize.
I know you both never denied the hacker problem. And some other did complained about hackers, like BlasinZ. But you can't deny that there have been 10 messages about the bubble every 1 about hackers (not talking about YOUR messages, talking about the whole community). That's what I dislike.

Neither my club was a "first strategy: let's bubble".
But let's analize how wars changed in these years, crossed with the hackers situation.

Before the SB: if you were in a good club, bubbling was almost never necessary, as there were a simple rule to avoid bubbles versus active clubs: to stay ahead. With a good start you managed to take the lead, then opposite clubs were forced to unbubble trying to recover. The bubble was boring when you were opposite to inactive clubs, or a strategy for clubs that weren't able in finding other ways to win. And that was painful, of course. Two times painful, as versus those clubs (not hard to recognize) you were sometimes forced to use the bubble too even if your club wasn't a bubbler 'cause if for any reason you'd let them gain enough points then adios amigos.
But there were a little positive thing with the bubble: it wasn't impossible beating hackers/cheaters. not easy, but neither impossible. And when it happened it was two times satisfying: for the victory and for having knocked out unlegit players with a legit play.
It was rare to fight versus an hacker club unless you weren't in the top500/top1000.
Wars rarely exceeded 1M points colletively.

After the SB, but before the KO: a good start still was important, but a good club had the possibility to recover almost until the end. Furthermore, inactive clubs weren't a problem anymore. Going asleep was dangerous, as the risk was to wake up and find a big gap to recover, but recovering was possible.
That was the good part.
The bad part? Hackers seems to have been multipied and multiplied, and now you find them even in lower arenas. In these wars, they can easely exceed 3M points (need some proof?). Far more hard to win versus them, almost impossible, 'cause there's no math saving your club, and with their maxed and unlimited cars and unlimited boosters they simply hammer on your cities from the beginning to the end without a way to stay safe. Even worst, EA changed the matchmaking too: if before the main qualification was a similar ranking (never matched a club with a difference of more than 20-25 ranking points from my club before that change), now other parameters are the first qualifications: club members are the first (if your club has 15 cities, you'll match only clubs from 13 to 17 members); probably some other parameter are involved, like war level of members. But the result is that in any arena, every 2 wars at least one is versus hackers.

After the KO: even worst. Nothing has changed from the last point, as many clubs -expecially hackers- don't care about KO and reset it undoming opposite cities. Of course, you'd can try to bubble them all in the last minutes and win the war, but sounds like utopia: maybe it could happen in first wars, but clubs will soon know this case and will pay attention just keeping some freezer and some umbrellas to avoid it. The only thing that changed is that "smart" clubs from different timezones can beat you while you club is sleeping, and that could be frustrating. So someone from your club must always be online, and that's not always easy, expecially for national clubs like mine.

So, yes, bubble strategy was a painful thing. But IMO things now are even worst, and I don't know if I'll play SCBI for long times anymore.
PinnacleValley
6 years ago
@meesfeet Please know I clearly understand your frustration and absolutely no apology is needed...you have not offended me in any way so please don’t have any concern at all - we’re good. I’m personally not easily offended, even the individual that questioned my mental status simply made me laugh (when you have to sink to those depths you’ve clearly lost the debate). I believe we can put to bed the legacy of the bubble strategy as it is no more...
The issue with hackers and cheaters in the game has also been elevated and will continue to be discussed and it’s now simply in EA’s court and the clock is ticking. I have stated they have done a pathetic job in managing perception and perhaps it’s time for the lawyers to get out of the way and let the marketing folks have a go at it for a while. At least (in theory) they are more focused on the customers expectations.
So the next question is how do you deal with the knockout timer? I read somewhere in the forum about someone losing a couple of wars in the final hour due to the knockout timer and were predictably upset about it. The club they lost to was clever and actually implemented a real strategy that will quickly become popular...I’m not suggesting it’s something EA needs to fix at this moment but I do believe they may need to start looking at the length of the timer or shorten the war games. My suggestion to a club would be to coordinate the start of the war game to coincide with an ending time where the majority of the members are available for the final 4 hours of war and play the game just like you would a bubble club. I suggest shield busters should not be available in the last 30 minutes of the game to remove the reign of terror and give a city a chance to get out of the bubble and fight. Just my initial opinion. Take care and stay safe.