Open our eyes
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 worl...
Forum Discussion
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.
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.
@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.
- Dear @PinnacleValleyLast 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.
Somehow I prefer recounts of experiences of ruining the opponent’s shot of winning by KO. Stories on how teams won by KO despite lagging behind in points make my blood boil lol That’s just my character.
I didn’t say you are bubble lover lol
As I had said, I understand your frustration with the cheaters. It’s not that you like bubbles, but it’s more of the cheaters running wild after the bubbles were gone. It’s like 80% of the players are cheaters! I suspect it’s cheaters creating multiple accounts (this is part of the reason why I have bad impression of feeders because cheaters always have feeders). In fact, lots of my teammates is losing interest due to the string of cheaters we had encountered. They are not even excited about the change. We are not sure about how long we will play this either (even with the bubble problem resolved).
You will probably see me grumbling more often about cheaters these days because that is the primarily thing in the game that hurts me the most now. Yes, it is not fun to fight five cheater teams consecutively. It’s demoralizing. You can say it’s my wish going haywire. I want the bubbles to be gone, it had come true but I ended up fighting hordes of cheaters. But I blame it on EA for the bad implementation of new features (I had complained about how bad SB was though I did think that it was better than nothing) and inaction on the banning the cheaters. If they had managed it better, we will not have this mess in the first place.
The knockdown thing is unfair for national teams. I feel little details can be added to make this fairer (yes, bad implementation again). Like some ideas Pinnacle had suggested.
To them, it’s just implement scenario A. That’s it. There’s no “if situation 1 happens, scenario B will be triggered, and situation 2 causes scenario C to take effect”.
It’s good to have this engaging conversation with you. Take care!
