I think multiaccounters are the real problem in this game, or at least one of the biggest ones.

I know that this is a delicate issue and that it is hard to solve, especially now that Silver is alone.

So why not try to help him out somehow?

I would suggest the introduction of helpers.

There will be three helpers, one per faction, chosen by the community.

The role of Helpers would be to address complaints from players via a dedicate chat, channel or forum.

Each time a player thinks someone of the other faction has cheated he would send a complain to the Helper of that faction.

The helper, would then be allowed to have access, granted by Silver, to all relevant data regarding the complaint, and with the help of other people from his faction, he would analyze it and see if he can conclude that the complaint was real and motivated.

Within something like a week or so he would write a quick report about the accusation and make it available to the other two Helpers.

They would then look at the report and decide if to report the accident to Silver, or to drop it.

In case of ok to report Silver would look at it (the idea being that doing so he will have much less cases to analyze) and decide if it is the case to do something or not against involved players. Final decision would be only for him to draw.

This could be a way to tackle the problem and see if there is willingness, in the community, to tackle the problem or not.

Of course we will never know if the Helpers, or their community are themselves cheaters or if they would make a honest work in trying to stop this phenomenon, but I think it could be worth a try.

I am conscious that I am oversimplifying the issue, but before quitting the game I really think it might be worth trying to do something that comes from the player community, as I am convinced that most players like to play honestly and are annoyed even if cheaters belong to their faction.

Maybe I am too optimistic.

What do you think?

I don think there is a way to moderate against people who try to cheat the system. I feel the solution to fighting multiscopers is to make their advantage irrelevant. Currently if one person has ten or so accounts they are likely to not be fighting more than one or two locals from another faction. I feel this is largely because of the small population size of the game for such a large map. If each faction had ten people in it for any given city on person with ten accounts would be a strong force but one that is easily overcome by even one enemy faction.

I think we need to work on building the number of real accounts and only take measure to reduce multiscopers if the problem gets worse.

I think moderating, and involving the whole community, is the only way to achieve something without having to rely on the only developer to much.

I have been playing for over 7 years and multiscopers have been a problem from the start. I have witnessed a multiscopers in action and, when confronted by admins, claimed it was a family member. That is the biggest issue at hand: If they can't be honest in game play, they are likely not going to be honest in admitting it. Who is to tell them that they are dishonest without hard evidence. The best tool so far is the ability to Sync Lock the scopes, which makes it extremely difficult to break for a real multiscoper, but at the same time is very unfair for legitimate family members. Unfortunately, it is a problem that is not going to go away anytime soon. Even the data won't prove much because most seasoned multiscopers have figured out exactly how many launches it takes to avoid Sync Locks.

I'm not saying that you have a bad idea, just covering some of the ground that has been addressed. It is indeed very frustrating, but the dilemma is how to not punish family and neighbors, while inhibiting cheaters. Furthermore, multiscoping is currently not a prohibited activity, but it is discouraged. So it is a dicey subject, to say the least.

Something else to consider with this problem. It seems every year Google or Apple release new features that protect user privacy (supposedly) while at the same time eliminating the ability for developers to identify users in any meaningful way.

In addition to that, they have added some features that make hacking easier (easier to attempt).

Apple and Google are not on the sides of the developers.

I agree the solution is to make multis irrelevant. Many more players would help, but we may only win this battle with major changes to game objectives. Such changes would likely alienate most of the loyal players we have today because the game would become something different, and the reasons they love it would go away.

It may not be hopeless, but we haven't solved the problem in 8 years. Maybe one day.

One alternative for mitigating multiscopers could be to remove the punishment for getting sync locked and instead reward the player who locked the accounts with bot/energy refreshes based on how much bots and energy the locked accounts use. Instead of bring down multiscopers and making the way they want to play bad we could elevate the people they are oppressing to the multiscopers level. The rewards would obviously need to heavily tested to make sure they are balanced. And the rewards should probably not be regular refreshes but ones that would expire when the sync lock expires or gets broken by the locked players.

This also has the added benefit of not restricting families, neighbors, and coworkers from playing together. And doesn't fundamentally change the rules for locking two or more players. And families that are able to break the lock would still be able play as normal. They would have to be vigilant about coordinating the mini game with their local faction mates but they wouldn't be punished for not being able to maintain perfect immunity.

That’s a cool idea, ali3n! I like that it focuses on leveling the playing field for non multiscopers. It does seem like there is a lot of potential for abuse of that system, though. If I was a multiscoper is there any reason I wouldn’t make three accounts, lock two of them without drawbacks, and give all the refreshes to the third? That would let me launch as much as five people could instead of just three.

That could be mitigated by not letting players sync lock accounts from their own faction, if that isn't already a thing. Or possibly just not paying the reward. That would force someone to put the accounts on another faction which is still possible but not as broadly useful. It would really only give the main account a way to farm lots of kills by stacking Shockwaves or possibly back stacking towers to try to open a tunnel. But that could be solved by not letting players who have been locked in the last few days start a tower. Giving the other faction time to stack enough bots to out vote the multiscoper. It's still a not perfect but it should overall reduce the amount and severity of advantages from multiscoping without alienating the players who want to play on multiple devices

It's true that the reward system might be circumvented, like always, but here might be something like that if you profit from this method, like you explained, but at a certain point get locked with one of the two players that you have profited from, you'll never be able to use this feature again, or at least for xxx months.

Of course this can also be tricked easily if you have a coordinated agreement between two distant players willing to cheat.

If player A has two other accounts, A1 and A2, and player B has B1 and B2, then A could profit from B1 and B2 and B from B1and B2, and they will never lock being far apart.

So I think the only solution is still a community driven effort to eradicate multis, which of course might not work, or heavily change how tunnels work, in order to really allow a big number of people of a faction to help out a player dealing with multis.

In any case, like always, for a difficoult problem, there's no easy solution...

This conversation recently came up amongst retired and semi-retired QONQR friends and I felt that one key point came out of that conversation that I haven’t really seen mentioned.

Mandatory Two-factor authentication with a cell phone number.

I assume most players play this game on a phone or a device with a connected cellular plan. TFA/MFA has been a standard practice for awhile now. QONQR should reflect newer security practices. It insures players can’t just use an old phone or secondary device (or more) that they have. It has to be an active device.

If two or more accounts get submitted for a sync-lock, use TFA as a supplement to test if there is one person behind one device. If they cannot pass TFA, they get sync-locked.

I’m sure there’s an overhead cost to run TFA/MFA and I think raising the prices on cubes and other in game purchases to offset cost seems like a no brainer.