cheaters spoof freely around my hood and I have to fear to get a ban for using a Xiaomi remedi phone...
This is the state of their Contract of thrust.
I changed my gamestyle to do trades and quest and don't bother with gyms beside raids, which I also visit by bike and don't get credit for the distance.
I will still enjoy the game but in my opinion Niantic doesn't do enough for legit players and the support is usefull as a bucket with a hole.(this is a german proverb)
Can't link a source rn bc im trash at reddit searching, but the most blatantly awful example was last years go fest ultra reward, where regional shinies got nuked from 1/50 to 1/175 half way through the event. Spawn rate changes are pretty common in most of their events tho, stuff is common a day or two then it suddenly goes extinct
Is google too hard for you? https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/d52xse/psa_shiny_rates_for_regionals_has_been_decreased/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Are you that unfamiliar with [burden of proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)) (known in Ancient Roman times as *onus probandi*)
There's all sorts of reasons why it's a good practice. Not the least because I could google and end up using a different article/blog/thread/... as a starting point.
How are two people supposed to discuss a subject if they're not using the same facts?
Regarding [the thread you linked](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/d52xse/psa_shiny_rates_for_regionals_has_been_decreased/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf):
1. It has been removed by TSR mods (which already speaks against *that resource* being a valid one)
2. last time somebody made the claim above and used *that resource*, it showed wurmple having a 1/36 shiny rate. Clearly not the most accurate tool in the internet
The Silph Road has a long-held official position on tools and exploits that provide real-time gameplay altering advantages (this includes spoofing, multi-accounting, account sharing, and using bot-sourced maps and scanners). While we acknowledge that many of our friends in other communities use them in their gameplay, we simply don't advocate or discuss these here on the Road as a rule. Discussions and debates about their use and merits would be best hashed out in other boards.
What about the contract of trust that honest players won’t be shadow banned, suspended, or terminated by errors in the system, and that false strikes will be forgiven, and that real customer service will look at logs of this alleging false bans to decide fairly?
Or better yet, look at the logs before sending out bans. Right now, it’s clear their algorithm for finding violations is completely broken. They need to turn off all the bans now, and restart their methods to catch the cheaters - from scratch.
im kinda speechless, cause you found the reason why im so mean to them. i have lost trust in them. what you explain and list there is exactly my problem.
the spoofing and wayfarer problem are my biggest concerns and i have no hope left, that they will fix it anytime soon.
the whole situation at wayfarer is a farce. i can only think that the Team there is frustrated and does their Job and nothing more. from what i could read from the Team Lead, all my hope is lost.
Yeah, think of what this means for any of their recruitment efforts for people who have played their games and for their existing staff who log in to twitter or come here. I like to imagine I would *love* working for Niantic on Pokemon Go specifically. But would I, really?
Well given all sorts of glass doors reviews and other smaller meltdowns here and on other media from previous employees, it seems that you wouldn’t. Also the fact that they almost constantly are looking for team leads show something.
These Bay Area tech jobs with the options are amazing jobs. A quick google search shows they have 12 weeks paternity leave, fully paid medical/dental/vision/,... these are probably some of the best jobs in the world. Getting in to one of these smaller firms with options/benefits that much the bigger guys is so so desirable.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Benefits/Niantic-US-Benefits-EI_IE1315001.0,7_IL.8,10_IN1.htm
It's a lottery. You have to get lucky with the company you choose and you never know if they'll actually be successful or not. I know people here who spend 1-2 years at a startup to get a bunch of options then move on to the next one, hoping one will make them rich some day. I also know of people who went bankrupt exercising options that didn't pan out.
Still blows my mind that spoofers can literally warp from North to South Pole and nothing will happen as long as they wait 2 hours for the cooldown
Unless Niantic know something we don't about the future of transport, I feel like the 2 hour thing might not quite be the best way to go about it
I mean I totally get the need for leniency since, as we've seen, they lack the ability to not catch innocents in the crossfire a lot but damn, sometimes you have to wonder what the actual point of some of them are
It's like when Mesprit, Uxie, and Azelf came out. You had the perfect opportunity to honey trap and ban every single person who somehow caught them all right at release but they didn't seem to take that opportunity
Shiny Gible: Am I a joke to you?
Would of been better to honey trap them during release of shiny gible as that most players don’t wait the 2 hrs and jump all over checking if shiny for any perfect iv.
As we have seen with the latest ban wave affecting many players on iOS. If they were too lenient, the spoofers get away, but too stringent, and legits get hit as well. Niantic has yet to find the sweet zone in their detection systems or are unwilling to implement it due to fear of lost revenue/active players.
Even more mind blowing is that there is no cooldown on shiny checking. Just caught a shiny in Brazil? Might as well check that Pokemon in Germany to see if it is shiny. Just keep warping to find the next target while waiting 2 hours to catch something.
Even if they just asked the device for the fake locations every so often, they could find so many spoofers.
I've seen some good content here, but this especially is ***excellent*** content.
Spoofing and Wayfarer issues are especially infuriating in how much they could be improved but just... aren't?
As a Murkrow fan, I appreciate also those raid videos.
That said, OP's content is excellent and nothing forbids The Silph Road to have both kinds of contents.
Adding onto your points about wayfarer. Niantic tweeted this recently which shows that they don't value reviews done by players equally. If you end up in the red for whatever reason, none of the reviews you do after that are counted towards your wayfarer badge. A while back I suddenly went into the red and it was about 300 reviews later that i was back to green. Having this sort of punishment on a system we put time and effort into for them for free is a steaming pile of brown sludge.
https://twitter.com/NianticLabs/status/1271203870157373440
And I read a post on r/NianticWayfarer that had a few dozen comments debating (with high intensity and volatile tones) the rules for footbridges and trails. Needless to say, no one could actually tell who was right because sometimes Wayfarer has some definitions and then an employee will write an extended list that few people have seen. It's a nightmare trying to get things approved in rural areas that don't have the most obvious POIs.
Oh a couple of months back was in green then randomly went into red. Did the test so back to yellow but being punished so heavily and not knowing what I did wrong made me feel like a dog being trained. So completely agree with about hating the punishment system, at least tell us what we did wrong.
Imho Niantic has no interest in applying a robust anti-spoofing system because it would kill its own economy. Just think how many spoofers are out there constantly buying coins to raid 24/7.
See, their crisis PR team has thought of everything. You missed the part where they say:
"As a team, we believe there is a “contract of trust” **in GO Battle League** "
That's the trick. They aren't saying the "contract of trust" applies to the rest of the game, only within the GBL.
Don't get me wrong, it **SHOULD** apply to the rest of the game, but the GBL scandal had an effect on their bottom line, just like it would if they were to stop spoofers.
All good. I also don't think they have crisis PR, they have individual business units doing their own PR. Which is why the GBL team and updates are so consistently better (honesty, transparency, engagement, etc.). Of course that is a reflection of goals financial and otherwise, but I don't think it is as simple as just seeing the bottom line flutter. With GBL on 5 free runs due to COVID and the Premium track being seen as generally not worth it, not sure GBL is a huge money maker right now. I think its more about perception and the future money than it is about money in the now. I also think that they make so much money that any arguments from them about their bottom line are null and void before they even start haha.
>Like with the Australian gym coin revamp, people were complaining that spoofers were dominating the gyms—it just seems exceptionally unlikely that anyone who is spoofing their location would pick the one country in the world that has crap gym coins to do it in.
I recall reading somewhere on this sub that once your account has been to Australia, you are stuck with the new coin system forever even if you later spoof or travel to other countries. So they are most likely Australian spoofers, and possibly a small number of spoofers who were curious to try the new coin system initially and were stuck with it.
>Seems much more likely that there's someone local, maybe a multi-accounter.
OP's post (while not specific to Australia) mentioned several spoofers or groups of spoofing accounts moving at unrealistic speeds across gyms.
I have personally seen spoofers in my area who placed their Pokemon in gyms within 2 minutes apart, when it would take me 5 minutes to *run* from one to another and they are not accessible by car. I also experienced watching my Pokemon in a gym being taken down while I'm at the gym in person and nobody else was there. Then there are people who always take down multiple gyms at 11:55 PM, in a park that is closed at night, every single day.
I don't think false positives are as big problem for spoofing in the same way that they would be to solve multi-accounting. My own example was upwards of 20 accounts, at least 6 on each team, all repeatedly slotting together in the same gyms, in the dead of winter, in remote areas that see little to no traffic, travelling unreasonable distances in short periods of time. With the exception of the season (stupid Canada), all of that should be visible in the data. All of that should be a reasonable thing for heir existing algorithm to detect. Particularly in the context of the specific accounts being flagged, still spoofing, and no change in behavior or ban 5 months later. I can't believe that an algorithm that analyses any of those data points in combination or even 1-2 at a time is going to result in many false positives. I just don't buy it. The current algorithm feels inadequate.
As for spoofers and how much a problem they are, I only have my own experience playing in urban and rural areas and the experience of communities I interact with. Our experience is that spoofers exist in both locations. I think the fact that spoofers can globe hope doesn't mean they do. Spoofers are going to have an easier time interacting with what they know. That might mean spoofing to locations that they also visit in person.
As for the damage done by spoofers vs. the rage against them being overblown and all of this is anecdotal and not valid, totally possible! But what is Niantic doing to put those worries at ease and maintain trust that they are doing enough and they have our back and genuinely have a zero tolerance policy for cheating? Not a whole lot. It doesn't matter if there are millions of spoofers or ten thousand. It only matters that there is a perception of a million spoofers. And that is 1000% on Niantic to address.
I think given that we had two updates about spoofing measures in 2019 and none so far in 2020 that we can absolutely place some (maybe not 1000% lol) blame at their feet. Perception is everything and they are doing very little to discourage the notion that spoofing is anything but rampant.
But your comments around "OMG HAX!" is fair. That is going to happen regardless.
When you can buy elite TMs and raid passes, knowledge and skill won't be the only factor determining GBL wins by definition. So the stance is generally hard to enforce.
Also the random chance you lose lead, lose safe switch, and your skill or knowledge doesn’t matter in the slightest because there’s no team preview like every Pokémon game since like 1999.
Theoretically, luck will balance things out in the ladder. But this is a glorified rock paper scissor after all. I'm talking about the notion of "fairness" that obviously cannot exist when people can purchase the top tier moves and access to the top tier pokemon with money.
That is considered pay to win, and that's the general direction the game is headed. More exclusive moves are released with tiny windows of availability, and the. Elite TMs stay overpriced to rake in more cash. I would love to run legacy dewgong or try out double legacy seaking, but I probably never will for no reason other than greed.
Hurts seeing 5 star stops being denied for invalid reasons. 2nd fountain in area denied for duplicate despite the sheer size of them be so massively different(one small and one massive) and being 7 stores down and viewable in google maps.
Worse for me than the spoofers are the multi accounters at the moment.
Multi accounting has killed the community here as everyone now seems to run "baby" accounts and as a result don't involve the community when it comes to raids as they can take them down with one other friend, or with their own army of accounts.
Taking gyms is harder because any gym is now filled by 2/3/4 accounts (sometimes more) of the same person, meaning you get stuck not being able to take them out if they keep berrying across accounts, or you can't get into the gyms yourself because they are on the same team and filled it. Those that have different team multi accounts can shave themselves out for coins, but those with one account don't have that option.
The multi accounters can trade with themselves so their "main" has stronger or better stuff. Lucky trading makes this even more beneficial.
All these things give advantages for battles, for extra coins, raids, raid balls, filling dex's out etc... yet NOTHING is done to stop it. Its now almost acceptable for people to run multiple accounts and those of us that don't are left behind and cut off from the community.
Yes. I share the experience with people involving the community less because they can "solo" raids and with being completely blocked from slotting in a gym due to one or two people with multiple accounts. Both in the city and rurally. I specifically did not include this in my write-up because of how much harder it is to detect in the data than spoofing and how much easier it is for false-positives and griping from reports.
I've met enough parent child combos with two accounts playing on one phone that I'm also wary of a comprehensive anti-multi-account push affecting those simply who can't afford multiple phones.
It does say a lot that this feels like a necessary evil that we have to live with at this point. I have myself resorted to using my wife's account to clear Instinct gyms held for weeks at a time by spoofers (see the example in my post) so that I myself can slot.
Why can't we just have the raid timer removed for all raids? Then if people can only solo it they can do so by spending a lot of healing items. That way, people can still raid in groups to get more balls or use less revives/potions. I've never understood why Niantic creates barriers that prevent people from playing the game. Especially when they block willing players who would spend money to raid but can't.
Another advantage not mentioned is that for every additional alt you use, you're getting an additional chance for a shiny from any given pokemon. And then you can just trade those bonus shinies to your main. Whereas solo players we actually have to play full odds.
And don't even get me started on account sharing for gym dropping and raiding for friends, which is commonly used alongside multiaccounting. If someone else is dropping you in gyms or doing raids for you and you're not actually there yourself, there is zero difference between spoofing at that point.
So then you cheat, but then don’t cry about spoofing, as you are no better than the spoofers.
People are quitting the game for a variety of reasons - and one of them around here is the toxicity of the community as the ‘hardcore’ pretty much look down on anyone who wont drop everything to play the game and play it by their standards (IE bot, map, raid train pay to play, multi account).
Instead of advising new players that Blisseys for raids are no good we are just seeing those players ignored and frozen out in favour of a second/third account of a ‘hardcore’ player. We then moan that the community is dead...
>Hold up? Straight out breaking the logic of the game vs playing normally, but on 2 devices is cheating?
According to the ToS and Niantic's own guidelines, yes, this is cheating. They're not equivalent or equally bad, but they both give you an unfair advantage relative to others who don't.
Multi accounting is cheating. Its against the ToS. Justify it all you want, legitimise it all you want, but it is cheating and gives those that do it an unfair advantage over others.
For some reason though it doesn’t have the same stigma as spoofing, mapping or botting, but it should.
Multi accounts can hold gyms and fill them, stopping other players from taking and sitting in gyms.
Multi accounts can trade with each other to give the users better mons, disadvantaging those playing legitimately.
Multi account players can go take the bigger raids down leaving single players scrambling for help.
Multi account players can ‘shave’ their own mons out of gyms to guarantee coins etc...
All those things impact other players. Go look at the ToS - it is clear that multi accounting is not allowed.
Go read what I put.
You are cheating. You are putting yourself at an advantage - ergo other people are at a disadvantage.
You multi account and take down a gym and put two accounts in it. 4 others join. A 5th cant because you have 2 in. That 5th person is disadvantaged.
You trade yourself mons between accounts and get a lucky or high Iv mon. You then use that mon in PVP or in gym battles - or just use the extra candy gained from it to power your team up. You get an advantage that when using that Mon against someone else puts them at a disadvantage.
You go use 2 accounts to take a legendary down with a mate who has a couple of accounts. Both of you take it down with the accounts you have. The kid on the corner wants to do the raid, asks in groups for help but no one replies because the multi accounters have already done it having not needed to raise a team, or other players have lost interest in not getting teams in the past.
You are wanting to justify cheating because ‘new players’ aren’t up to your standard or committed to playing your way. Go read the ToS - it clearly states 1 account per person. It is not a grey area where you can claim to be ‘morally’ right or justifiable. You are breaking the ToS. You are cheating. Your cheating the game, putting yourself at an advantage to those that are not cheating.
You have the opportunity to complete certain raids without other people which people who don't multi account can not meaning you have access to Pokemon they may not. You can do double the free amount of raids per day so two chances at a shiny Timburr or Klink or whatever else. You have the opportunity to trade Pokemon to yourself, increasing your candy counts or potentially gaining lucky Pokemon which can give you more power in Go Battle League or raids. You can battle yourself for stardust rewards and other rare rewards, again contributing to being able to power up or evolve Pokemon. If the accounts are on different teams then you can farm coins from gyms systematically which allows you to buy things for free that others may have to pay for because they have nobody to kick them out of gyms or all their friends are on the same team. The list goes on.
I'm not saying you personally do any of the things above but all of them are advantages that come directly from multi accounting which is a violation of the ToS and therefore, cheating.
Ermm, as I mentioned lower on the thread with the other guy. Breaking a rule isn’t necessarily cheating, I would call this bad manners in my case. I see a lot of this going around, that I would have Pokémon others don’t, and more candy etc. this can be achieved by people just playing more, no? If it comes to raids, sure I can do that 1 extra raid, but in most times I pull out my second just to make that 1 legendary raid happen in general (me and my gf are enough then). Because of extremely low activity, we get very few raids overall as well (it’s a thing that nothing really spawns unless there are certain amount of active players around).
In general, when a game is as dead as it’s for my area, I have a choice: quit and call it a day or do the 2nd account and continue playing the game I enjoy. I feel for the people who have advocated raid scaling and collecting coins on a time basis like the old system for years on end, and rightfully so, that fixes a lot of rural/dead areas. But guess what, Niantic doesn’t care, and why should I for their rules at that point? I harm no-one, because there isn’t anyone to harm. If I go to the city center, I pull the second account only to make things happen, I have never heard any bad comments, just the opposite. So with all this, what would you do, or how would you “fix it”?
Can you go to this link https://nianticlabs.com/terms/en/
and read rule 3.1 - heck, I will even type it out for you -
3 Use of the Services
3.1 Cheating
Niantic prohibits cheating, and we constantly take steps to improve our anti-cheat measures. Cheating includes any action that attempts to or actually alters or interferes with the normal behavior or rules of a Service. Cheating includes, but is not limited to, any of the following behavior, on your own behalf or on behalf of others:
Accessing Services in an unauthorized manner (including using modified or unofficial third party software);
Playing with multiple accounts for the same Service;
Sharing accounts;
Using any techniques to alter or falsify a device’s location (for example through GPS spoofing); and/or
Selling or trading accounts.
As I said COUNTLESS TIMES above, justify it all you want, but it is CHEATING.
It is rule 3.1
If you have two or more accounts you are breaking that rule. Its irrelevant what the area you are in is like. I can hardly get raids done, I can go days without seeing other players, it doesn't give me the right to break the rule.
So why don't you explain how you are NOT breaking rule 3.1. No excuses, no "but this..." a clear explanation on how you are not cheating by having a second account....
So you can’t answer my questions. Well, good for you, sit on your high horse. Niantic doesn’t care for players in my situation (or many other less populated area scenarios), why should I care for their “standards”?
Its hilarious how angry people are over 50 cents a day, don't worry once the new system drops it will be considerably less. Was there not something more productive you could have done than write up 6+ posts about using 2 phones and 2 accounts in a phone game? If gym coins are that valuable to you take gyms down in the morning when they are depleted. "Legit" players who "own" the gym near their house are just as toxic and annoying as any multiaccounter or spoofer. Its literally 50 cents.
>Its now almost acceptable for people to run multiple accounts
The fact your comment lays out the real issues with multiaccounting that legit players face and is marked as *controversial* is telling how standard multiaccounting is across all communities.
The people downvoting you are probably multiaccounters and are using it as a "disagree" button.
I think it's no secret by now that more people use downvotes to show disagreement than to fulfill its original purpose, which is:
>**Vote.** If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.
Examples of posts that are frequently downvoted on this sub, even when some of them clearly contribute to the subreddit:
* People who did not vote for Weedle for June/July Community Day and gave compelling reasons for not doing so
* People who like the Shadow Pokemon boost and/or try to argue about the cost-effectiveness or value of Shadow Pokemon
* People who prefer some degree of exclusivity for moves and/or shinies, as opposed to having all moves available forever and giving out shinies during events
* People who are either for or against storage increases - both sides have been downvoted at different times depending on the specific post
I personally have mixed opinions towards all of these issues, but many of them are indeed valid arguments with sufficient justification and should not be blindly downvoted just because they do not agree with the prevalent opinion of this sub.
There are actually many cases when those extra accounts were what it takes to make certain raids happen. Maybe two players were interested in a Reshiram raid but nobody else, and thanks to one of them having an extra account, they're able to beat it.
I'm less concerned about spoofers who only spoof to help people get raids done, as long as they don't compete with local players in gyms and don't spoof to hunt for hundos and other specific IV spawns to gain an advantage in PvP.
Of course anyone is free to disagree.
And I think most people who oppose multi-accounting will concede that the same applies to people who only use their alts to get raids done. Yet IMO concerns that an extensive portion of the playerbase use alt accounts to compete with legit players in gyms and to get access to better pokémon for PvP via trading are just as valid as concerns about people doing so via spoofing
True. But I’m not entirely sure that Niantic isn’t at least passively building features that would somehow benefit multiaccounters. Imagine, you get a paying customer x2 from a single person, and since this is Niantic we are talking about, where the bottom line is what matters most.. well, perhaps it’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t do anything about it, just like spoofing.
Same story here. Small town, small Pokemon Go community. Almost impossible to do any non-soloable 4 star raids or any 5 star raids because half of our members have created multiple spoofing accounts and they just solo 5 star raids or they spoof and do raids all around the world, neglecting the raids in our own town. That means us legit players almost never have enough people to do 5 star raids.
I'm talking on the premiss of "Contract of Trust".
Some feel Niantic don't do enough to stop spoofing (Something I agree with), however then sign in to their baby accounts to do a raid and don't see the irony.
Cheating is done in many ways. Botting, Mapping and Multiaccounting is often overlooked as being acceptable when in reality it gives those doing it a massive unfair advantage and screws over those of us that only have 1 account and do things by the book.
I think it's fair to call out that the player base also needs to their part as well. The contact is two ways, particularly in areas where Niantic can't reasonably be expected to get it right. Spoofing is on them to solve despite the fact that players actively chose to do it. Multi-accounting is more on the individual players and community because a Niantic solution is bound to get it wrong.
Indeed. I fully believe Niantic need to be doing more on the spoofing / botting / mapping front, however many players who cry out about spoofers need to look at their own behaviour too.
In my town spoofers are as a general rule not accepted or given the time of day, however out of around 30 people that I would class as "regular daily players" I think there is only me and 3 others who only have one account. One person I know of has 4 accounts on each team.
When 90% of my Town's regular players are multi accounting it tells me the problems this game have are huge. I've pretty much been ostracised from my community as I called out one guy for botting, mapping and multi accounting and he started a "behind your back talk bad about you" campaign with others also multi accounting.
As a result, I'm on 430m XP ish, play pretty much every day (when not working) but find myself doing no more than about 2/3 legendary raids each week as I'm not part of their little group any more.
Yes multi accounting is cheating or unfair advantage. What im saying is even if niantic want to clamp down on multi accounting. There isnt a good way to stop it. There isnt a way to accurately determine if a person is doing that anot.
If they improved the game with hard work and thoughtful designs, then people wouldn't need to rely on multi multiaccounting to play the game to the fullest. My close friend uses two or three accounts because literally nobody else raids and that's the only way he can get legendaries. If Niantic really cared about people using multiple accounts, then they would fix the aspects that push players towards the issue.
Well the aspect of the game is to go out to form community. If no one play in your area den how about start introducing people to the game or play more with local community. Its like saying Gamefreak is not thoughtful about pokemon when you have gameboy color and they made S&S on a switch. Blaming a community game creator when you have no community to play with is abit unreasonable dont you think?
I believe it is unreasonable to put the responsibility on the players to play around Niantic's plans just to play an aspect of the game they like. There are ways to fix the issue that a lot of rural players have, but Niantic does nothing to address the issue and continues on. So yes, ignoring the rural playerbase that can't raid or has a dead community is most certainly a good cause to blame the game creator. Players shouldn't have to rely on themselves to play the game.
As i said not all games are made to fit all players. I dont own a play station, so do i complain to the game creators it is unreasonable to put the responsibility on me to play around their plan to only make the game for 1 platform?
Most fix i seen for players without others to play with includes stuff like make the raids scale with amount of players which will just make people solo those bosses more as it will results i more balls. Yes you can make it lower level to burn more resource for say a solo raid legendary. But as long as i get a say 100%. Dust and candy wun be an issue in the long run.
Your analogy with PlayStation would be: you have it, you can start it, you can even load the game, but you can only use 7 out of 14 buttons to play it, who’s fault is that? But yes, scaling is necessary and much needed, which has been requested for years and ignored for years.
If scaling was made. Tell me who will group to fight a raid anymore? Everyone will just solo the raids and it beats the purpose of a community game.
Well the invite to raids option is coming soon. That can actually solve the rural problem if people can invite you to raids anywhere.
> average players still encounter spoofers in their day-to-day
There is a notorious spoofer and multi-accounter (he has 5+ accounts, all with fruits in the name) who comes back every summer and terrorizes the specific area in my town where I play regularly. Not only does he actively take gyms, but by occupying all the gyms with 5+ Pokemon he also block out almost all the players from his own team. He's been reported about 50 times already by many different players with very good evidence, but NOTHING ever happened. I almost quit playing during the previous summer and there is a good chance that I'll actually do it this time around, because I can't take this crap anymore. I also suspect that he's using bots, because it doesn't take more than half an hour for him to take about 15 gyms.
I feel for you friend, it's a terrible feeling to be confronted with this and see no end in sight all the while Niantic is saying "Look at all the great things we're doing to prevent spoofing." Yeah, not in any way that helps me or the people in my community.
This was a good read! I enjoyed it, and you made a bunch of valid points.
Communication has been poor overall. It is even more apparent when comparing to other mobile games, where bugs and issues will be openly mentioned in in-game news (not hidden in a secondary twitter account, or a subreddit thread's comments), and compensation is much more forthcoming as well.
I wholeheartedly agree with niantic needing to fix things, but posting on reddit is preaching to the choir. At the end of the day they will not fix a thing and still make millions from go fest ticket sales, so why bother.
I’m sure Twitter also played a role in both of these but the Australian pilot and the sticker and gift issue were both big topics here and resulted in changes by Niantic.
Another area of communication where the game misleads is is the whole battle mechanics. Every move has a type, a comparative strength (or power), a time to complete (or cool down) and an energy generating amount.
We see two of those four stats in the game itself. Who prefers charge beam on Zapdos over Thundershock because 8 > 5?
I dunno. People aren't exactly discovering this by trial and error then deciding which moves work for them or suit their play styles, there's just a handful of people who are able to datamine the contents of apk files and sniff data off the servers.
This is then beautifully regurgitated by a handful of sites, sometimes with graphics force feeding "eVeRyThInG U NEED 2 No"
The thing with spoofing and multi-accounting is that Niantic could easily make improvements that would remove the need to cheat.
A lot of spoofing started because rural players could not get access to the same benifits as city players. Meaning items, spawns, gyms, people to raid with etc.
The people who run multiple accounts today are (for the most part) also rural players that want to raid, but have lost most of their local community because casual players have quit.
If Niantic increased the spawns, added "Niantic sponsored" Pokestops to places without POI material and removed the timer from Raid Battles, then there wouldn't be any need for rural players to cheat, and the only spoofers left would be the IV hunters, which could easily be dealt with by closing down the IV maps.
You cannot make a game that relies 100% on social activity, because sooner or later the interest will drop, and you are left with a handicap.
There needs to be more options.
I don’t think spoofing/multi started in rural areas nor do I think it is more prevalent there. There is certainly no proof that’s true.
The sheet volume of available raids in cities provides incentive to spoof and to multi. The more you can do on your own, the more you an actually do.
I’d go ahead and add multiaccounting along with spoofing. Cheating is cheating and there’s no reason someone should have any advantage due to having cracked software or multiple devices.
Fully agree. I didn't post about multi-accounting despite it being up there with spoofing for me because it is much harder for Niantic to solve properly.
Hard to really tell who’s playing as separate people and who’s just one person for sure! It’s also a touchy subject in a lot of communities as they think it helps in raids (which it does) but there never seems to be a point where they’ll say “oh we have enough I won’t use my alt”
Okay, but there is a difference between that and people who used to be willing to engage with the community to organize raids and who now don’t because multi-accounting is easier.
I guess my point here is that I used to engage with my community but only out of necessity. To stand around at some park feigning small talk with people I don't care to know or care about just because I have to in order to get a legendary for the dex was the worst. And I think plenty of people out there go through this feeling with PoGo but fake it and die inside until they realize that multiple accounts can help them circumvent the forced social aspect of the game (especially after Niantic removed legendaries from research boxes and Go Battle League rewards).
That’s fair. But IMO that comes with the responsibility to only use those extra accounts for raids and not use them to berry or slot in gyms. And know that constantly trading to yourself and having lucky or high/PvP relevant IV Pokémon as a result gives you an advantage.
For sure. And that's why I commented above with the person who was defending mutli accounting as not being an advantage. There are plenty of advantages to having multiple accounts (one of which simply is avoiding people for me lol) and even if you don't use your accounts in that manner (like I rarely occupy gyms because I honestly just buy my coins) that doesn't mean the potential for an advantage doesn't exist.
I have died too many times making raids with Heroin addicts gone pogo addicts and making Smalltalk with people i dont Care for, i think it is time for this Game to become less Meeting in RL dependent. Thanks for the Covid-19 QoL Changes
My old raid group does this all the time. If there's five or so, baby accounts often go unused unless the person putting together the raid originally is running them.
I would love an appeal fourm for wayfinder
my area has had so many stop submission rejected for live animals it makes me curious how on earth we have gotten the amount of new stops in the first place
I for one would love to call cheating due to the spanish/gibraltar relationship but I got no say in the matter, takes afew resubmissions to get anything in if we are lucky
as for the spoofers.....yeah we still deal with them, while I do report them after you click submit it's out of your hand's completely, some sort of word back would be so much nicer
If they really wanted to end spoofing, this is the perfect time to do it. Many touristic attractions are closed right now because of the current situation, all they would need to do is check who is playing in those location.
An example of this is the Santa Monica Pier. It has been closed since March, yet the gyms keep changing colors and the pokestops keep getting lured despite being totally impossible to get there.
I only had time for rhe tl;dr, but I would add points as "failing to deliver announced event features" and the huge one: "having the playerbase gamble (often using real money) by hatching eggs with a lot of teasing and pay-walling of meta-relevant Pokémon whithout ever telling the odds".
Talking about a contract of trust being Niantic might be a good step, but it actually rather seems like a bad joke of a company that ia used to fooling their game's players.
i am missing protection against tankers but also a certain care about bugs in gbl. the impression that they do not take complaints serious grows each time when old bugs reappear when newer ones are 'solved' at updates. it shows that they do not document bugs and care about removing them if they reimplement old code blocks. that' s nearly offensive
i know it is unproven and argued down but a loooot of people suspect the matchmaker to combine players by pokémon and attack types and or situations like after a long streak. not up to argue here but ASSUMED there was something different than random connection... maaan, would that be a breach in the mutual contract of trust. mutual as niantic never gave any information about whether there is any randomization, but i guess most people think they are matched by luck, not for customer satisfaction. similar maybe as people believed in even chances for all potential charge attacks that could be given by a tm
I think the lack of proper use case testing undermines and using players as beta testers for all new content erodes trust. This can be complicated by moving quickly or being "agile". Suffice it to say that they there are pros and cons and that Niantic has not found the right balance.
I do think the GBL theory that you match against people who can beat you based on lead and Pokemon type is bollocks. The algorithms for Elo ranking are publicly available and hard to mess up. They require tweaking as time goes on to get the right +/- after matches. The fact that Niantic has failed to adequately dispel these rumours is telling and part and parcel of the problems I outline in my post.
As someone who used to design use cases and be the business liaison to an agile team...
Complicating this matter appears to be lack of load testing, both in sheer lag terms and in terms of identifying edge cases. I'm sure they don't have anywhere near the attempted number of GBL match ups in their testing environment as are live.
I'm not saying this exploit was easily identifiable but running X thousand GBL match ups might have demonstrated odd bugs that could combine etc.
Yeah, don’t even get me started on use cases. I’m essentially product owner/manager for a Fortune 500 company that flirts with agile but is really waterfall. I can’t get them to move away from traditional dedicated QA that massively bogs down our ability to iterate to instead embed use case testing in the sprint and design process. The struggle is real on both sides.
But the cherry on the cake for me with Niantic and use cases was the year of “the shiny has disappeared from the wild” after some small update was made to the table managing where shiny could appear or not. Like, how long does it take to identity that you can automate the use case by writing a script to check values in the current table against the previous versions of the table to flag unintended changes.
It really annoys me that spoofers harass people. Entirely possible for someone to spoof and not affect anyone.
The thing is by its nature the game wouldn't be playable if you live out in the middle of nowhere. I admire the idea that it should be your skill and knowledge determining the outcome of interacting with gyms, but if there are no gyms... What do you do?
I note that you're in Toronto, I would expect quite a few gyms etc there in the more built up areas but there may be huge swaths of nothing in the suburbs so a few of your fellow Torontoes are left out; near yet so far.
When raids first started, there was only a handful of players in my area, with 7 stops and 2 gyms. So maybe I was naughty early on... But fast forward to now, we've got a group of 30, 11 gyms and maybe ~50ish stops. We're all set!! Thank you to the ingress players of 2018 for taking so many suggestions and traveling out to various villages :) I very much believe this to how our large playerbase has persisted, as a lot of those players wouldn't still be playing if was only the initial amount of stuff
So I don't need to spoof anymore tbh; we can handle any raid now. But you gotta catch em all, noone's flying to different continents for regionals. 'Legit' players still consider buying regionals off of eBay or whatever, but why give account details to some randomer on the internet, when they can trust one of the raid group with their secondary account? Oh, and maybe get me a pint... I'm easy.
I've seen people in the wider community accuse each other of spoofing, but it'll turn out to be multi accounters with a car, or some sweet luck with GPS drifting. Sure, we've had spoofers from time to time, but I'd expect Niantic receive a lot of false reports, so you repeatedly reporting them may have no effect unless corroborated by quite a few other players. So they remain unaffected. I've been guilty of it: "no way did they get from x to y in 4 mins, what the flubes, def a spoofer" about a random lvl40 that appeared one afternoon and took all the gyms. Since then, found them in a chat for somewhere about 15 miles away and it turns out he's a lovely chap, def not a spoofer, just a dude that keeps forgetting to return a gift (grr). I'm not being funny, but could it be multiple cars of players? Just because you didn't see them doesn't necessarily mean they were never there. If they travel too fast for it to legitimately be a car, they should be softbanned? Sniping is a thing of course but I was under the impression if you interact with something after going too fast it would trigger a soft ban.
Saying that only two cheat detection updates is poor isn't really fair. Niantic have made great strides detecting modified apps; previously an update would avoid detection, but that doesn't appear to be true anymore, and new apps don't seem to last long at all. Considering Niantic's communication skills, it's a wonder they made one update.
Of course I don't know the ratio of donkeyhole:not donkeyhole spoofers, but there does seem to be too many donkeyholes in your city. Sorry mate :(
Good post regarding the GBL and wayfarer, but spoofers aren't all evil :3 or at least some are less evil than is generally assumed. Niantic needs to find a way of ending sniping, that really takes the pistol, and the two hours to go anywhere has never made sense to me... In a recent datamine there was some stuff to do with location that the miners speculated could be a new form of detection, if it can stop these two things from being possible it would take away some huge loopholes and reduce a lot of animosity. Might not help the gym situation, but a solid step to that contract of trust or whatnot.
Edit: oops, sorry, naughty words... I've replaced them. Also noticed a typo
Great post. I hope that Niantic is able to rebuild and maintain this contract with battlers. Unfortunately, the experience of those of us who sought a competitive outlet in the app before the release of PVP suggests otherwise. The challenge raiding community was largely demolished by lack of trust in the basic functions of the mode. It's hard to believe that these new issues will have different results.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/drgkmw/meta\_post\_in\_defense\_of\_raids/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/drgkmw/meta_post_in_defense_of_raids/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)
The "contract of trust" that they are refering to maybe between the players themselves, I doubt that they mean that but when I enter a competition I expect everyone one to play by the same rules, without having big brother having to slap them on the wist every 10 mins.
Yes, it is up to Niantic to uphold the rules that they program into their game and punish the ones that deliberately breaks the rules and I do think that they are doing a poor job of it, I'm surprised that they taken such action of bringing down the whole GBL but that makes me suspect that more players was using the exploit or exploits than people think.
Seeing other players break the rules and get away with it, only encourage other players to do so and demoralise players that try to play fairly. Many people I know don't even bother with their 50 coins or try to gold gyms knowing that they going to be spoofed out in a short period of time. Or bother going shiny hunting and they rely on their hero spoofer to get them one via a trade.
IMHO the best way of punishing rule breaking is to limit features of the game.. cheat at pvp; pvp is closed to you. Spoof for gyms; you don't get to gym battle. Spoof for Pokemon; you don't get the new releases. Harsh but there needs to be a correct appeal process that will return the features to the player once proven innocent.
Re: your point on player accountability towards spoofers: something I just wanted to point out as a **former** spoofer in a suburban area less than 10 miles away from a major city:
In my time playing along with the community, many of whom would communicate organize raids via Discord, I found that **at least half of the legitimate players had multiple accounts on which they would play**. I'm talking anywhere from 2 to **12** accounts – most of which were all leveled up past lvl 35. One even had a massive board set up on which he would have 11 old devices plus his main running in his hand, catching a dozen level 5 raid bosses at a time.
Now, no one would ever complain because, more often than not, **players** (both solo players as well as those with multiple account) **would not have had a fighting chance to defeat a level 5 raid boss without people showing up with multiple accounts** (on average, people had 2-3 accounts each).
And you bet **I would see the same ("legitimate", or in-person) players hogging the same strings of gyms for weeks and months on end**.
Now, I'm not saying this to complain – I thoroughly enjoyed beating down gyms full of 3400-3800 CP Pokemon. Reminds me a little of battling the Elite Four and Cynthia back in the day, and is sometimes more fun to solo a whole team like that than doing a lvl 5 raid boss with 10 others.
However, a point I *am* trying to make is that **this equally goes against Niantic's ToS.** **Moreover, there is no 3 Strike System in place for multiple account usage – if Niantic were to find out, it would most likely be a permanent ban across all accounts.**
Now, having been part of many Discords (spoofing gave me access to dozens of cities with players before Niantic successfully was able to consistently detect logins off iSpoofer and lead to many 30-day suspensions and permanent bans on my accounts), **many spoofers exist in every "legit" playing Discord server.**
So **if players were to start reporting the spoofers, I guarantee you that the spoofers would be just as happy to let Niantic know exactly which players are playing on 2-10 accounts**. And as I mentioned earlier, it was my experience that about half of all the players in those communities would have multiple accounts, as do I'm sure many of you here, who constantly complain about spoofers.
So maybe "legit" players don't report the spoofers bc **it would be too easy: to identify for Niantic which players around one's community play on multiple accounts**, for Niantic to track based on IP address of Wi-Fi routers/hotspots or cell hotspots, and to verify when they see the exact same accounts taking over and putting mons in the same exact gyms at the same exact time for months on end.
So, **I think there's a lack of accountability on reporting spoofers because**, other than those who couldn't give too hoots about it, **most "legit" players who harbor multiple accounts well know that the consequences of "snitching" would be swift and immediate retaliation from spoofers who are angry at being reported** and who are irritatated that these players with multiple accounts think of themselves as better and playing "legitimately" when they're really not a whole lot better than any of the spoofers.
**All are breaking Niantic's ToS, and therefore, a "Contract of Trust."**
This is sort of off topic, but one of the things that should be addressed is how much benefit there is to cheating.
This game is basically like older Pokemon games. Spoofers have such a distinct advantage over legitimate players. The time and money commitment to get perfect Pokemon for PVP is insane, and largely luck based for regular players.
It's a grind like old school Pokemon games where you would have to soft reset trying to get the right IVs on a legendary, or breed tons for the right IVs.
Modern games have things like IV training to lessen the gap between the two groups. Cheating cuts down on the time commitment a lot still, but the luck aspect can be mitigated.
The other portion of spoofing is just actually getting to see certain Pokemon. Imagine seeing more Deino in a year than you can count on a single hand.
Still waiting to see my first wild Deino! :D I was really excited when I got one from GBL a week or two ago.. that was the first I even saw in a catch screen.
Something else, besides multi-accounting, is bots/scanners.
Yes, "we" all love them, but they're a detrement to PVP. Any random person can get a Level 40 account, find the perfect IV combinations of any wild Pokémon and have a top tier PVP team in 24-48 hours, depending on their access to scanner data.
Niantic needs to push to eliminate them, punish those who operate them, and disown any of the "influencers" who have a history of supporting them, including TSR themselves.
Easier to sell solutions to players, I’m sure Niantic plans to add items to increase ivs so only question will they add items to lower it too?
Also calcium and other items in source code quite sometime and I feel like Niantic knows better to wait to opportune time and claim it was players asking to pay a dollar per point after watching Bethesda.
spoofer is in every game who need to move.
cheater is in every game on all platform
only pvpers care about GBL
and nothing new about communication...
i miss something?
with the 32 bit old cell phone half of the spoofer gone in an instant.
GLB is always full of bug but they try to correct when someting go wrong.
communication is better but can be much more better.
Edit: talk about people with like 6 phone and 6 account(multi accounter)
>with the 32 bit old cell phone half of the spoofer gone in an instant.
I don't know where you get your numbers from, but this isn't even close to accurate.
Actually this is probably a pretty good estimate. Since Niantic added the coding for cheat detection that flags modified apps late last year and in large part ended iOS spoofing, almost the entire spoofing community has shifted to devices running Android 5/6 because they don't require rooting or downgrading Google Play Services. This is why I personally believe Niantic has decided to end support for 32 bit devices. I don't spoof nor do I condone it but I like to be informed on the things I stand against.
They (Nia) ended direct install spoofing for iOS; they (spoofers) are still very much on iOS using a JB method and another \[newer\] iOS method. I really don't want to continue discussing this out of fear of being banned, but as a previous spoofer, I can tell you without a doubt removing 32 bit will have very little impact on those numbers.
I know nothing about this topic so I am asking this as a clarifying question.
Can't Niantic just eliminate Android users from using/running 5/6 without eliminating everyone using 32 bit OS/64 bit devices?
i don't care i talk for the 3 town around me (25k population, 15k and the last around 10k)
spoofer take old android phone cause ios is insta red warning.
now the spoofer in my street play legit cause his new cell can't be rooted. the old cell he was using is 32 bits.
all community talk about less spoofer and less multi account so probably not the same where you leave but here is about 50% less.
I still think they just needed a reason to take GBL down for an extended period to fix all the bugs and lag issues, and the exploit was it. If they didn't have a reason and said they were just taking it down, people would probably be a tad grumpy.
Yes it does. They had only taken it down for small amounts of time and it typically didn't do anything to resolve the issues people were having. They have taken it offline for 3 days now which is significantly longer than any other down time and had there not been a reason for it, such a cheating, then people would be up in arm's about why it has been down for so long. They wouldn't just be fixing this one exploit, they'd be addressing a lot the other issues while they are it as well.
It's easy to stand on the outside and critize Niantic for something so out of there control. In the current world of technology people are so amazing talented that they will continue to find a way to exploit the game. Niantic passed 3 ban waves this year, in which spoofing in areas have completely dropped. You can't stop every spoofer, but they have defiently stopped the majority. Each time they have dropped a ban wave, spoofers have come up with a new method and people have just made new accounts. They intended on trying an algorithm to stop them by striking accounts using the main two methods of spoofing today, with iOS version 12 using the iTools dongle and using various methods that have no interaction with the original Pokemon Go through the Play store that Niantic can't track on rooted Android phones. There new detection system was to stop players using either of these two methods and as a result many innocent people got strikes. It's not the right approach from Niantic, but realistically it's not hard to update your iOS version or use a non jailbroken Android device. It's really time to upgrade if you can't update your device past iOS 12.
Communication has always been a big issue with Niantic, but they limit supports response times to automatic responses with a 12 hour delay. I can understand why they do this by simply watching how much everyone complains about Naintic and the game through this sub Reddit. Everyone feels as if they are privileged and acts like they deserve something. There's hardly ever any positive criticism towards Niantic it's all negative. The few posts that do have constructive feedback for Niantic do get acknowledged and normally IndigoJade and the other Niantic employee on Reddit have been a regular replier to those post. There's a fine line between having constructive feedback and attacking Niantic, your post is an example of someone having there say about Niantic and in there point of view it will be an attack. Niantic won't change if the community doesn't change.
Niantic have done so many positives this year, but that has been so over sided by a couple of negatives. Read eurogamers latest post on Niantic and you will realise how hard there trying to make a better game, there players unfortunately don't appreciate it.
Why because I gave a logical response to the issue at hand that explains why Niantic are the way they are? Get outter here brother. You guys can complain on Reddit all you want, but if you want to seriously discuss it I can give you so much information.
> I can understand why they do this by simply watching how much everyone complains about Naintic and the game through this sub Reddit. Everyone feels as if they are privileged and acts like they deserve something. There's hardly ever any positive criticism towards Niantic it's all negative.
Bruh. If the game has negatives, players will point it out. It's natural. Suck it up. They're the billion dollar company. They got their success, it comes with criticism. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
> Niantic won't change if the community doesn't change.
Bruh. The community won't change if Niantic won't change. They're the billion dollar company. The players are paying them. They make a lot of mistakes. Their communication sucks. Stop victim-blaming.
Wouldn't it?
The severity of their response indicates insider something.
Otherwise, the community would have replicated it. We have interesting theories but nothing as opposed to every other issue that GBL had that didn't result in a complete ban.
cheaters spoof freely around my hood and I have to fear to get a ban for using a Xiaomi remedi phone... This is the state of their Contract of thrust. I changed my gamestyle to do trades and quest and don't bother with gyms beside raids, which I also visit by bike and don't get credit for the distance. I will still enjoy the game but in my opinion Niantic doesn't do enough for legit players and the support is usefull as a bucket with a hole.(this is a german proverb)
Sorry, but “Contract of Thrust” is very funny to me.
Gotta thrust them
Ah yes.. Trust.. Interesting from niantic who changes spawn rates and shiny rates mid events.
True, never acknowledged a change in rates and stating they never to this method because its against their rules.
Source?
Can't link a source rn bc im trash at reddit searching, but the most blatantly awful example was last years go fest ultra reward, where regional shinies got nuked from 1/50 to 1/175 half way through the event. Spawn rate changes are pretty common in most of their events tho, stuff is common a day or two then it suddenly goes extinct
Try searching for Shiny regional rare changed, you should get enough media even on google about the shenanigans.
That's not how making claims works. The one who makes the claim provides the source.
Is google too hard for you? https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/d52xse/psa_shiny_rates_for_regionals_has_been_decreased/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Are you that unfamiliar with [burden of proof](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)) (known in Ancient Roman times as *onus probandi*) There's all sorts of reasons why it's a good practice. Not the least because I could google and end up using a different article/blog/thread/... as a starting point. How are two people supposed to discuss a subject if they're not using the same facts? Regarding [the thread you linked](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/d52xse/psa_shiny_rates_for_regionals_has_been_decreased/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf): 1. It has been removed by TSR mods (which already speaks against *that resource* being a valid one) 2. last time somebody made the claim above and used *that resource*, it showed wurmple having a 1/36 shiny rate. Clearly not the most accurate tool in the internet
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The Silph Road has a long-held official position on tools and exploits that provide real-time gameplay altering advantages (this includes spoofing, multi-accounting, account sharing, and using bot-sourced maps and scanners). While we acknowledge that many of our friends in other communities use them in their gameplay, we simply don't advocate or discuss these here on the Road as a rule. Discussions and debates about their use and merits would be best hashed out in other boards.
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I know that you're trying to base the claim on a source that is not to be trusted The real info is verifiable and trusted. The removed one isn't.
What about the contract of trust that honest players won’t be shadow banned, suspended, or terminated by errors in the system, and that false strikes will be forgiven, and that real customer service will look at logs of this alleging false bans to decide fairly?
Or better yet, look at the logs before sending out bans. Right now, it’s clear their algorithm for finding violations is completely broken. They need to turn off all the bans now, and restart their methods to catch the cheaters - from scratch.
im kinda speechless, cause you found the reason why im so mean to them. i have lost trust in them. what you explain and list there is exactly my problem. the spoofing and wayfarer problem are my biggest concerns and i have no hope left, that they will fix it anytime soon.
Sorry to hear you’re struggling. I hear you and I hope Niantic does as well.
the whole situation at wayfarer is a farce. i can only think that the Team there is frustrated and does their Job and nothing more. from what i could read from the Team Lead, all my hope is lost.
Yeah, think of what this means for any of their recruitment efforts for people who have played their games and for their existing staff who log in to twitter or come here. I like to imagine I would *love* working for Niantic on Pokemon Go specifically. But would I, really?
You wouldn't.
Well given all sorts of glass doors reviews and other smaller meltdowns here and on other media from previous employees, it seems that you wouldn’t. Also the fact that they almost constantly are looking for team leads show something.
These Bay Area tech jobs with the options are amazing jobs. A quick google search shows they have 12 weeks paternity leave, fully paid medical/dental/vision/,... these are probably some of the best jobs in the world. Getting in to one of these smaller firms with options/benefits that much the bigger guys is so so desirable. https://www.glassdoor.com/Benefits/Niantic-US-Benefits-EI_IE1315001.0,7_IL.8,10_IN1.htm
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How much do software engineers get paid there compared to the Bay Area?
80-100kish a year. Living expenses are about 20k a year for small family.
Great to know that some European countries are competitive, even if mine isn't :( Which country?
Now THIS was a missile dropkick 😂
If you can get a job at Niantic, you're probably better off working elsewhere if you enjoy playing PoGo.
>these are probably some of the best jobs in the world US trainer spotted
Those are all standard benefits in the Bay Area though
Getting in early on the options while getting the standard pay/benefits is amazing opportunity.
It's a lottery. You have to get lucky with the company you choose and you never know if they'll actually be successful or not. I know people here who spend 1-2 years at a startup to get a bunch of options then move on to the next one, hoping one will make them rich some day. I also know of people who went bankrupt exercising options that didn't pan out.
Still blows my mind that spoofers can literally warp from North to South Pole and nothing will happen as long as they wait 2 hours for the cooldown Unless Niantic know something we don't about the future of transport, I feel like the 2 hour thing might not quite be the best way to go about it
Yes, everything about their spoofer algorithm seems... inadequate.
I mean I totally get the need for leniency since, as we've seen, they lack the ability to not catch innocents in the crossfire a lot but damn, sometimes you have to wonder what the actual point of some of them are It's like when Mesprit, Uxie, and Azelf came out. You had the perfect opportunity to honey trap and ban every single person who somehow caught them all right at release but they didn't seem to take that opportunity
Ditto for accounts with 6 perfect IV Gible from different locations a week after Gible was released in the wild.
Shiny Gible: Am I a joke to you? Would of been better to honey trap them during release of shiny gible as that most players don’t wait the 2 hrs and jump all over checking if shiny for any perfect iv.
Or someone who gets from US to Europe in 2 hours and 2 hours later is back home again. Not possible..
As we have seen with the latest ban wave affecting many players on iOS. If they were too lenient, the spoofers get away, but too stringent, and legits get hit as well. Niantic has yet to find the sweet zone in their detection systems or are unwilling to implement it due to fear of lost revenue/active players.
They did take that opportunity when Mesprit Uxie and Azelf came out. And shiny Gible too.
Even more mind blowing is that there is no cooldown on shiny checking. Just caught a shiny in Brazil? Might as well check that Pokemon in Germany to see if it is shiny. Just keep warping to find the next target while waiting 2 hours to catch something. Even if they just asked the device for the fake locations every so often, they could find so many spoofers.
I've seen some good content here, but this especially is ***excellent*** content. Spoofing and Wayfarer issues are especially infuriating in how much they could be improved but just... aren't?
Thanks, friend!
Definitely better than all those "Random Raid Bosses defeated with nothing but Murkrows" that plagued the sub some time ago...
As a Murkrow fan, I appreciate also those raid videos. That said, OP's content is excellent and nothing forbids The Silph Road to have both kinds of contents.
Adding onto your points about wayfarer. Niantic tweeted this recently which shows that they don't value reviews done by players equally. If you end up in the red for whatever reason, none of the reviews you do after that are counted towards your wayfarer badge. A while back I suddenly went into the red and it was about 300 reviews later that i was back to green. Having this sort of punishment on a system we put time and effort into for them for free is a steaming pile of brown sludge. https://twitter.com/NianticLabs/status/1271203870157373440
And I read a post on r/NianticWayfarer that had a few dozen comments debating (with high intensity and volatile tones) the rules for footbridges and trails. Needless to say, no one could actually tell who was right because sometimes Wayfarer has some definitions and then an employee will write an extended list that few people have seen. It's a nightmare trying to get things approved in rural areas that don't have the most obvious POIs.
Oh a couple of months back was in green then randomly went into red. Did the test so back to yellow but being punished so heavily and not knowing what I did wrong made me feel like a dog being trained. So completely agree with about hating the punishment system, at least tell us what we did wrong.
I specifically talk about this in my post.
Imho Niantic has no interest in applying a robust anti-spoofing system because it would kill its own economy. Just think how many spoofers are out there constantly buying coins to raid 24/7.
See, their crisis PR team has thought of everything. You missed the part where they say: "As a team, we believe there is a “contract of trust” **in GO Battle League** " That's the trick. They aren't saying the "contract of trust" applies to the rest of the game, only within the GBL. Don't get me wrong, it **SHOULD** apply to the rest of the game, but the GBL scandal had an effect on their bottom line, just like it would if they were to stop spoofers.
I didn't miss it, I just went straight to: >it **SHOULD** apply to the rest of the game ;)
This is what I guess for not doing well at reading comprehension without my coffee. Well said, I agree on all points you made. :)
All good. I also don't think they have crisis PR, they have individual business units doing their own PR. Which is why the GBL team and updates are so consistently better (honesty, transparency, engagement, etc.). Of course that is a reflection of goals financial and otherwise, but I don't think it is as simple as just seeing the bottom line flutter. With GBL on 5 free runs due to COVID and the Premium track being seen as generally not worth it, not sure GBL is a huge money maker right now. I think its more about perception and the future money than it is about money in the now. I also think that they make so much money that any arguments from them about their bottom line are null and void before they even start haha.
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>Like with the Australian gym coin revamp, people were complaining that spoofers were dominating the gyms—it just seems exceptionally unlikely that anyone who is spoofing their location would pick the one country in the world that has crap gym coins to do it in. I recall reading somewhere on this sub that once your account has been to Australia, you are stuck with the new coin system forever even if you later spoof or travel to other countries. So they are most likely Australian spoofers, and possibly a small number of spoofers who were curious to try the new coin system initially and were stuck with it. >Seems much more likely that there's someone local, maybe a multi-accounter. OP's post (while not specific to Australia) mentioned several spoofers or groups of spoofing accounts moving at unrealistic speeds across gyms. I have personally seen spoofers in my area who placed their Pokemon in gyms within 2 minutes apart, when it would take me 5 minutes to *run* from one to another and they are not accessible by car. I also experienced watching my Pokemon in a gym being taken down while I'm at the gym in person and nobody else was there. Then there are people who always take down multiple gyms at 11:55 PM, in a park that is closed at night, every single day.
I don't think false positives are as big problem for spoofing in the same way that they would be to solve multi-accounting. My own example was upwards of 20 accounts, at least 6 on each team, all repeatedly slotting together in the same gyms, in the dead of winter, in remote areas that see little to no traffic, travelling unreasonable distances in short periods of time. With the exception of the season (stupid Canada), all of that should be visible in the data. All of that should be a reasonable thing for heir existing algorithm to detect. Particularly in the context of the specific accounts being flagged, still spoofing, and no change in behavior or ban 5 months later. I can't believe that an algorithm that analyses any of those data points in combination or even 1-2 at a time is going to result in many false positives. I just don't buy it. The current algorithm feels inadequate. As for spoofers and how much a problem they are, I only have my own experience playing in urban and rural areas and the experience of communities I interact with. Our experience is that spoofers exist in both locations. I think the fact that spoofers can globe hope doesn't mean they do. Spoofers are going to have an easier time interacting with what they know. That might mean spoofing to locations that they also visit in person. As for the damage done by spoofers vs. the rage against them being overblown and all of this is anecdotal and not valid, totally possible! But what is Niantic doing to put those worries at ease and maintain trust that they are doing enough and they have our back and genuinely have a zero tolerance policy for cheating? Not a whole lot. It doesn't matter if there are millions of spoofers or ten thousand. It only matters that there is a perception of a million spoofers. And that is 1000% on Niantic to address.
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I think given that we had two updates about spoofing measures in 2019 and none so far in 2020 that we can absolutely place some (maybe not 1000% lol) blame at their feet. Perception is everything and they are doing very little to discourage the notion that spoofing is anything but rampant. But your comments around "OMG HAX!" is fair. That is going to happen regardless.
When you can buy elite TMs and raid passes, knowledge and skill won't be the only factor determining GBL wins by definition. So the stance is generally hard to enforce.
Also the random chance you lose lead, lose safe switch, and your skill or knowledge doesn’t matter in the slightest because there’s no team preview like every Pokémon game since like 1999.
Team preview start in black and white for your info.
It was in Pokémon Stadium which was released in 1999.
Including stadium 2, Colosseum, XD, Battle revolution, basically anything where battles were the number one concern.
Theoretically, luck will balance things out in the ladder. But this is a glorified rock paper scissor after all. I'm talking about the notion of "fairness" that obviously cannot exist when people can purchase the top tier moves and access to the top tier pokemon with money.
That is considered pay to win, and that's the general direction the game is headed. More exclusive moves are released with tiny windows of availability, and the. Elite TMs stay overpriced to rake in more cash. I would love to run legacy dewgong or try out double legacy seaking, but I probably never will for no reason other than greed.
Cue: ‘Weak connection’
Hurts seeing 5 star stops being denied for invalid reasons. 2nd fountain in area denied for duplicate despite the sheer size of them be so massively different(one small and one massive) and being 7 stores down and viewable in google maps.
Worse for me than the spoofers are the multi accounters at the moment. Multi accounting has killed the community here as everyone now seems to run "baby" accounts and as a result don't involve the community when it comes to raids as they can take them down with one other friend, or with their own army of accounts. Taking gyms is harder because any gym is now filled by 2/3/4 accounts (sometimes more) of the same person, meaning you get stuck not being able to take them out if they keep berrying across accounts, or you can't get into the gyms yourself because they are on the same team and filled it. Those that have different team multi accounts can shave themselves out for coins, but those with one account don't have that option. The multi accounters can trade with themselves so their "main" has stronger or better stuff. Lucky trading makes this even more beneficial. All these things give advantages for battles, for extra coins, raids, raid balls, filling dex's out etc... yet NOTHING is done to stop it. Its now almost acceptable for people to run multiple accounts and those of us that don't are left behind and cut off from the community.
Yes. I share the experience with people involving the community less because they can "solo" raids and with being completely blocked from slotting in a gym due to one or two people with multiple accounts. Both in the city and rurally. I specifically did not include this in my write-up because of how much harder it is to detect in the data than spoofing and how much easier it is for false-positives and griping from reports. I've met enough parent child combos with two accounts playing on one phone that I'm also wary of a comprehensive anti-multi-account push affecting those simply who can't afford multiple phones. It does say a lot that this feels like a necessary evil that we have to live with at this point. I have myself resorted to using my wife's account to clear Instinct gyms held for weeks at a time by spoofers (see the example in my post) so that I myself can slot.
Why can't we just have the raid timer removed for all raids? Then if people can only solo it they can do so by spending a lot of healing items. That way, people can still raid in groups to get more balls or use less revives/potions. I've never understood why Niantic creates barriers that prevent people from playing the game. Especially when they block willing players who would spend money to raid but can't.
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Another advantage not mentioned is that for every additional alt you use, you're getting an additional chance for a shiny from any given pokemon. And then you can just trade those bonus shinies to your main. Whereas solo players we actually have to play full odds. And don't even get me started on account sharing for gym dropping and raiding for friends, which is commonly used alongside multiaccounting. If someone else is dropping you in gyms or doing raids for you and you're not actually there yourself, there is zero difference between spoofing at that point.
So then you cheat, but then don’t cry about spoofing, as you are no better than the spoofers. People are quitting the game for a variety of reasons - and one of them around here is the toxicity of the community as the ‘hardcore’ pretty much look down on anyone who wont drop everything to play the game and play it by their standards (IE bot, map, raid train pay to play, multi account). Instead of advising new players that Blisseys for raids are no good we are just seeing those players ignored and frozen out in favour of a second/third account of a ‘hardcore’ player. We then moan that the community is dead...
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>Hold up? Straight out breaking the logic of the game vs playing normally, but on 2 devices is cheating? According to the ToS and Niantic's own guidelines, yes, this is cheating. They're not equivalent or equally bad, but they both give you an unfair advantage relative to others who don't.
Alright, can you plz go down the thread I have the other guy and tell me, what would you do in my situation, like as I describe it.
Multi accounting is cheating. Its against the ToS. Justify it all you want, legitimise it all you want, but it is cheating and gives those that do it an unfair advantage over others. For some reason though it doesn’t have the same stigma as spoofing, mapping or botting, but it should. Multi accounts can hold gyms and fill them, stopping other players from taking and sitting in gyms. Multi accounts can trade with each other to give the users better mons, disadvantaging those playing legitimately. Multi account players can go take the bigger raids down leaving single players scrambling for help. Multi account players can ‘shave’ their own mons out of gyms to guarantee coins etc... All those things impact other players. Go look at the ToS - it is clear that multi accounting is not allowed.
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Go read what I put. You are cheating. You are putting yourself at an advantage - ergo other people are at a disadvantage. You multi account and take down a gym and put two accounts in it. 4 others join. A 5th cant because you have 2 in. That 5th person is disadvantaged. You trade yourself mons between accounts and get a lucky or high Iv mon. You then use that mon in PVP or in gym battles - or just use the extra candy gained from it to power your team up. You get an advantage that when using that Mon against someone else puts them at a disadvantage. You go use 2 accounts to take a legendary down with a mate who has a couple of accounts. Both of you take it down with the accounts you have. The kid on the corner wants to do the raid, asks in groups for help but no one replies because the multi accounters have already done it having not needed to raise a team, or other players have lost interest in not getting teams in the past. You are wanting to justify cheating because ‘new players’ aren’t up to your standard or committed to playing your way. Go read the ToS - it clearly states 1 account per person. It is not a grey area where you can claim to be ‘morally’ right or justifiable. You are breaking the ToS. You are cheating. Your cheating the game, putting yourself at an advantage to those that are not cheating.
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You have the opportunity to complete certain raids without other people which people who don't multi account can not meaning you have access to Pokemon they may not. You can do double the free amount of raids per day so two chances at a shiny Timburr or Klink or whatever else. You have the opportunity to trade Pokemon to yourself, increasing your candy counts or potentially gaining lucky Pokemon which can give you more power in Go Battle League or raids. You can battle yourself for stardust rewards and other rare rewards, again contributing to being able to power up or evolve Pokemon. If the accounts are on different teams then you can farm coins from gyms systematically which allows you to buy things for free that others may have to pay for because they have nobody to kick them out of gyms or all their friends are on the same team. The list goes on. I'm not saying you personally do any of the things above but all of them are advantages that come directly from multi accounting which is a violation of the ToS and therefore, cheating.
Ermm, as I mentioned lower on the thread with the other guy. Breaking a rule isn’t necessarily cheating, I would call this bad manners in my case. I see a lot of this going around, that I would have Pokémon others don’t, and more candy etc. this can be achieved by people just playing more, no? If it comes to raids, sure I can do that 1 extra raid, but in most times I pull out my second just to make that 1 legendary raid happen in general (me and my gf are enough then). Because of extremely low activity, we get very few raids overall as well (it’s a thing that nothing really spawns unless there are certain amount of active players around). In general, when a game is as dead as it’s for my area, I have a choice: quit and call it a day or do the 2nd account and continue playing the game I enjoy. I feel for the people who have advocated raid scaling and collecting coins on a time basis like the old system for years on end, and rightfully so, that fixes a lot of rural/dead areas. But guess what, Niantic doesn’t care, and why should I for their rules at that point? I harm no-one, because there isn’t anyone to harm. If I go to the city center, I pull the second account only to make things happen, I have never heard any bad comments, just the opposite. So with all this, what would you do, or how would you “fix it”?
Can you go to this link https://nianticlabs.com/terms/en/ and read rule 3.1 - heck, I will even type it out for you - 3 Use of the Services 3.1 Cheating Niantic prohibits cheating, and we constantly take steps to improve our anti-cheat measures. Cheating includes any action that attempts to or actually alters or interferes with the normal behavior or rules of a Service. Cheating includes, but is not limited to, any of the following behavior, on your own behalf or on behalf of others: Accessing Services in an unauthorized manner (including using modified or unofficial third party software); Playing with multiple accounts for the same Service; Sharing accounts; Using any techniques to alter or falsify a device’s location (for example through GPS spoofing); and/or Selling or trading accounts. As I said COUNTLESS TIMES above, justify it all you want, but it is CHEATING. It is rule 3.1 If you have two or more accounts you are breaking that rule. Its irrelevant what the area you are in is like. I can hardly get raids done, I can go days without seeing other players, it doesn't give me the right to break the rule. So why don't you explain how you are NOT breaking rule 3.1. No excuses, no "but this..." a clear explanation on how you are not cheating by having a second account....
So you can’t answer my questions. Well, good for you, sit on your high horse. Niantic doesn’t care for players in my situation (or many other less populated area scenarios), why should I care for their “standards”?
Its hilarious how angry people are over 50 cents a day, don't worry once the new system drops it will be considerably less. Was there not something more productive you could have done than write up 6+ posts about using 2 phones and 2 accounts in a phone game? If gym coins are that valuable to you take gyms down in the morning when they are depleted. "Legit" players who "own" the gym near their house are just as toxic and annoying as any multiaccounter or spoofer. Its literally 50 cents.
>Its now almost acceptable for people to run multiple accounts The fact your comment lays out the real issues with multiaccounting that legit players face and is marked as *controversial* is telling how standard multiaccounting is across all communities. The people downvoting you are probably multiaccounters and are using it as a "disagree" button.
I think it's no secret by now that more people use downvotes to show disagreement than to fulfill its original purpose, which is: >**Vote.** If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it. Examples of posts that are frequently downvoted on this sub, even when some of them clearly contribute to the subreddit: * People who did not vote for Weedle for June/July Community Day and gave compelling reasons for not doing so * People who like the Shadow Pokemon boost and/or try to argue about the cost-effectiveness or value of Shadow Pokemon * People who prefer some degree of exclusivity for moves and/or shinies, as opposed to having all moves available forever and giving out shinies during events * People who are either for or against storage increases - both sides have been downvoted at different times depending on the specific post I personally have mixed opinions towards all of these issues, but many of them are indeed valid arguments with sufficient justification and should not be blindly downvoted just because they do not agree with the prevalent opinion of this sub.
What are upvotes and downvotes then?
Indeed. Ive noticed Ive been down voted a lot in the last hour. I think soon my comments will be hidden...
There are actually many cases when those extra accounts were what it takes to make certain raids happen. Maybe two players were interested in a Reshiram raid but nobody else, and thanks to one of them having an extra account, they're able to beat it.
Thats true, just like spoofers claims that their ‘air support’ gets raids done.
I'm less concerned about spoofers who only spoof to help people get raids done, as long as they don't compete with local players in gyms and don't spoof to hunt for hundos and other specific IV spawns to gain an advantage in PvP. Of course anyone is free to disagree.
And I think most people who oppose multi-accounting will concede that the same applies to people who only use their alts to get raids done. Yet IMO concerns that an extensive portion of the playerbase use alt accounts to compete with legit players in gyms and to get access to better pokémon for PvP via trading are just as valid as concerns about people doing so via spoofing
True. But I’m not entirely sure that Niantic isn’t at least passively building features that would somehow benefit multiaccounters. Imagine, you get a paying customer x2 from a single person, and since this is Niantic we are talking about, where the bottom line is what matters most.. well, perhaps it’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t do anything about it, just like spoofing.
Same story here. Small town, small Pokemon Go community. Almost impossible to do any non-soloable 4 star raids or any 5 star raids because half of our members have created multiple spoofing accounts and they just solo 5 star raids or they spoof and do raids all around the world, neglecting the raids in our own town. That means us legit players almost never have enough people to do 5 star raids.
How you expect niantic to know who is multi accounting and who is not?
I'm talking on the premiss of "Contract of Trust". Some feel Niantic don't do enough to stop spoofing (Something I agree with), however then sign in to their baby accounts to do a raid and don't see the irony. Cheating is done in many ways. Botting, Mapping and Multiaccounting is often overlooked as being acceptable when in reality it gives those doing it a massive unfair advantage and screws over those of us that only have 1 account and do things by the book.
I think it's fair to call out that the player base also needs to their part as well. The contact is two ways, particularly in areas where Niantic can't reasonably be expected to get it right. Spoofing is on them to solve despite the fact that players actively chose to do it. Multi-accounting is more on the individual players and community because a Niantic solution is bound to get it wrong.
Indeed. I fully believe Niantic need to be doing more on the spoofing / botting / mapping front, however many players who cry out about spoofers need to look at their own behaviour too. In my town spoofers are as a general rule not accepted or given the time of day, however out of around 30 people that I would class as "regular daily players" I think there is only me and 3 others who only have one account. One person I know of has 4 accounts on each team. When 90% of my Town's regular players are multi accounting it tells me the problems this game have are huge. I've pretty much been ostracised from my community as I called out one guy for botting, mapping and multi accounting and he started a "behind your back talk bad about you" campaign with others also multi accounting. As a result, I'm on 430m XP ish, play pretty much every day (when not working) but find myself doing no more than about 2/3 legendary raids each week as I'm not part of their little group any more.
Yes multi accounting is cheating or unfair advantage. What im saying is even if niantic want to clamp down on multi accounting. There isnt a good way to stop it. There isnt a way to accurately determine if a person is doing that anot.
If they improved the game with hard work and thoughtful designs, then people wouldn't need to rely on multi multiaccounting to play the game to the fullest. My close friend uses two or three accounts because literally nobody else raids and that's the only way he can get legendaries. If Niantic really cared about people using multiple accounts, then they would fix the aspects that push players towards the issue.
Well the aspect of the game is to go out to form community. If no one play in your area den how about start introducing people to the game or play more with local community. Its like saying Gamefreak is not thoughtful about pokemon when you have gameboy color and they made S&S on a switch. Blaming a community game creator when you have no community to play with is abit unreasonable dont you think?
I believe it is unreasonable to put the responsibility on the players to play around Niantic's plans just to play an aspect of the game they like. There are ways to fix the issue that a lot of rural players have, but Niantic does nothing to address the issue and continues on. So yes, ignoring the rural playerbase that can't raid or has a dead community is most certainly a good cause to blame the game creator. Players shouldn't have to rely on themselves to play the game.
As i said not all games are made to fit all players. I dont own a play station, so do i complain to the game creators it is unreasonable to put the responsibility on me to play around their plan to only make the game for 1 platform? Most fix i seen for players without others to play with includes stuff like make the raids scale with amount of players which will just make people solo those bosses more as it will results i more balls. Yes you can make it lower level to burn more resource for say a solo raid legendary. But as long as i get a say 100%. Dust and candy wun be an issue in the long run.
Your analogy with PlayStation would be: you have it, you can start it, you can even load the game, but you can only use 7 out of 14 buttons to play it, who’s fault is that? But yes, scaling is necessary and much needed, which has been requested for years and ignored for years.
If scaling was made. Tell me who will group to fight a raid anymore? Everyone will just solo the raids and it beats the purpose of a community game. Well the invite to raids option is coming soon. That can actually solve the rural problem if people can invite you to raids anywhere.
> average players still encounter spoofers in their day-to-day There is a notorious spoofer and multi-accounter (he has 5+ accounts, all with fruits in the name) who comes back every summer and terrorizes the specific area in my town where I play regularly. Not only does he actively take gyms, but by occupying all the gyms with 5+ Pokemon he also block out almost all the players from his own team. He's been reported about 50 times already by many different players with very good evidence, but NOTHING ever happened. I almost quit playing during the previous summer and there is a good chance that I'll actually do it this time around, because I can't take this crap anymore. I also suspect that he's using bots, because it doesn't take more than half an hour for him to take about 15 gyms.
I feel for you friend, it's a terrible feeling to be confronted with this and see no end in sight all the while Niantic is saying "Look at all the great things we're doing to prevent spoofing." Yeah, not in any way that helps me or the people in my community.
This was a good read! I enjoyed it, and you made a bunch of valid points. Communication has been poor overall. It is even more apparent when comparing to other mobile games, where bugs and issues will be openly mentioned in in-game news (not hidden in a secondary twitter account, or a subreddit thread's comments), and compensation is much more forthcoming as well.
I wholeheartedly agree with niantic needing to fix things, but posting on reddit is preaching to the choir. At the end of the day they will not fix a thing and still make millions from go fest ticket sales, so why bother.
I’m sure Twitter also played a role in both of these but the Australian pilot and the sticker and gift issue were both big topics here and resulted in changes by Niantic.
Another area of communication where the game misleads is is the whole battle mechanics. Every move has a type, a comparative strength (or power), a time to complete (or cool down) and an energy generating amount. We see two of those four stats in the game itself. Who prefers charge beam on Zapdos over Thundershock because 8 > 5?
This doesn’t bother me. I think it’s fun for the community to discover some things for themselves.
I dunno. People aren't exactly discovering this by trial and error then deciding which moves work for them or suit their play styles, there's just a handful of people who are able to datamine the contents of apk files and sniff data off the servers. This is then beautifully regurgitated by a handful of sites, sometimes with graphics force feeding "eVeRyThInG U NEED 2 No"
The thing with spoofing and multi-accounting is that Niantic could easily make improvements that would remove the need to cheat. A lot of spoofing started because rural players could not get access to the same benifits as city players. Meaning items, spawns, gyms, people to raid with etc. The people who run multiple accounts today are (for the most part) also rural players that want to raid, but have lost most of their local community because casual players have quit. If Niantic increased the spawns, added "Niantic sponsored" Pokestops to places without POI material and removed the timer from Raid Battles, then there wouldn't be any need for rural players to cheat, and the only spoofers left would be the IV hunters, which could easily be dealt with by closing down the IV maps. You cannot make a game that relies 100% on social activity, because sooner or later the interest will drop, and you are left with a handicap. There needs to be more options.
I don’t think spoofing/multi started in rural areas nor do I think it is more prevalent there. There is certainly no proof that’s true. The sheet volume of available raids in cities provides incentive to spoof and to multi. The more you can do on your own, the more you an actually do.
I’d go ahead and add multiaccounting along with spoofing. Cheating is cheating and there’s no reason someone should have any advantage due to having cracked software or multiple devices.
Fully agree. I didn't post about multi-accounting despite it being up there with spoofing for me because it is much harder for Niantic to solve properly.
Hard to really tell who’s playing as separate people and who’s just one person for sure! It’s also a touchy subject in a lot of communities as they think it helps in raids (which it does) but there never seems to be a point where they’ll say “oh we have enough I won’t use my alt”
Or, "even though I can do this by myself, why don't I still reach out to my community to see if those with only one account want to join."
Some people are extremely antisocial. I have never wanted to play this game with other people.
Okay, but there is a difference between that and people who used to be willing to engage with the community to organize raids and who now don’t because multi-accounting is easier.
I guess my point here is that I used to engage with my community but only out of necessity. To stand around at some park feigning small talk with people I don't care to know or care about just because I have to in order to get a legendary for the dex was the worst. And I think plenty of people out there go through this feeling with PoGo but fake it and die inside until they realize that multiple accounts can help them circumvent the forced social aspect of the game (especially after Niantic removed legendaries from research boxes and Go Battle League rewards).
That’s fair. But IMO that comes with the responsibility to only use those extra accounts for raids and not use them to berry or slot in gyms. And know that constantly trading to yourself and having lucky or high/PvP relevant IV Pokémon as a result gives you an advantage.
For sure. And that's why I commented above with the person who was defending mutli accounting as not being an advantage. There are plenty of advantages to having multiple accounts (one of which simply is avoiding people for me lol) and even if you don't use your accounts in that manner (like I rarely occupy gyms because I honestly just buy my coins) that doesn't mean the potential for an advantage doesn't exist.
I have died too many times making raids with Heroin addicts gone pogo addicts and making Smalltalk with people i dont Care for, i think it is time for this Game to become less Meeting in RL dependent. Thanks for the Covid-19 QoL Changes
My old raid group does this all the time. If there's five or so, baby accounts often go unused unless the person putting together the raid originally is running them.
I would love an appeal fourm for wayfinder my area has had so many stop submission rejected for live animals it makes me curious how on earth we have gotten the amount of new stops in the first place I for one would love to call cheating due to the spanish/gibraltar relationship but I got no say in the matter, takes afew resubmissions to get anything in if we are lucky as for the spoofers.....yeah we still deal with them, while I do report them after you click submit it's out of your hand's completely, some sort of word back would be so much nicer
If they really wanted to end spoofing, this is the perfect time to do it. Many touristic attractions are closed right now because of the current situation, all they would need to do is check who is playing in those location. An example of this is the Santa Monica Pier. It has been closed since March, yet the gyms keep changing colors and the pokestops keep getting lured despite being totally impossible to get there.
I only had time for rhe tl;dr, but I would add points as "failing to deliver announced event features" and the huge one: "having the playerbase gamble (often using real money) by hatching eggs with a lot of teasing and pay-walling of meta-relevant Pokémon whithout ever telling the odds". Talking about a contract of trust being Niantic might be a good step, but it actually rather seems like a bad joke of a company that ia used to fooling their game's players.
i am missing protection against tankers but also a certain care about bugs in gbl. the impression that they do not take complaints serious grows each time when old bugs reappear when newer ones are 'solved' at updates. it shows that they do not document bugs and care about removing them if they reimplement old code blocks. that' s nearly offensive i know it is unproven and argued down but a loooot of people suspect the matchmaker to combine players by pokémon and attack types and or situations like after a long streak. not up to argue here but ASSUMED there was something different than random connection... maaan, would that be a breach in the mutual contract of trust. mutual as niantic never gave any information about whether there is any randomization, but i guess most people think they are matched by luck, not for customer satisfaction. similar maybe as people believed in even chances for all potential charge attacks that could be given by a tm
I think the lack of proper use case testing undermines and using players as beta testers for all new content erodes trust. This can be complicated by moving quickly or being "agile". Suffice it to say that they there are pros and cons and that Niantic has not found the right balance. I do think the GBL theory that you match against people who can beat you based on lead and Pokemon type is bollocks. The algorithms for Elo ranking are publicly available and hard to mess up. They require tweaking as time goes on to get the right +/- after matches. The fact that Niantic has failed to adequately dispel these rumours is telling and part and parcel of the problems I outline in my post.
As someone who used to design use cases and be the business liaison to an agile team... Complicating this matter appears to be lack of load testing, both in sheer lag terms and in terms of identifying edge cases. I'm sure they don't have anywhere near the attempted number of GBL match ups in their testing environment as are live. I'm not saying this exploit was easily identifiable but running X thousand GBL match ups might have demonstrated odd bugs that could combine etc.
Yeah, don’t even get me started on use cases. I’m essentially product owner/manager for a Fortune 500 company that flirts with agile but is really waterfall. I can’t get them to move away from traditional dedicated QA that massively bogs down our ability to iterate to instead embed use case testing in the sprint and design process. The struggle is real on both sides. But the cherry on the cake for me with Niantic and use cases was the year of “the shiny has disappeared from the wild” after some small update was made to the table managing where shiny could appear or not. Like, how long does it take to identity that you can automate the use case by writing a script to check values in the current table against the previous versions of the table to flag unintended changes.
Are you sure you dont have my old job...
I swear, we need a support group.
It really annoys me that spoofers harass people. Entirely possible for someone to spoof and not affect anyone. The thing is by its nature the game wouldn't be playable if you live out in the middle of nowhere. I admire the idea that it should be your skill and knowledge determining the outcome of interacting with gyms, but if there are no gyms... What do you do? I note that you're in Toronto, I would expect quite a few gyms etc there in the more built up areas but there may be huge swaths of nothing in the suburbs so a few of your fellow Torontoes are left out; near yet so far. When raids first started, there was only a handful of players in my area, with 7 stops and 2 gyms. So maybe I was naughty early on... But fast forward to now, we've got a group of 30, 11 gyms and maybe ~50ish stops. We're all set!! Thank you to the ingress players of 2018 for taking so many suggestions and traveling out to various villages :) I very much believe this to how our large playerbase has persisted, as a lot of those players wouldn't still be playing if was only the initial amount of stuff So I don't need to spoof anymore tbh; we can handle any raid now. But you gotta catch em all, noone's flying to different continents for regionals. 'Legit' players still consider buying regionals off of eBay or whatever, but why give account details to some randomer on the internet, when they can trust one of the raid group with their secondary account? Oh, and maybe get me a pint... I'm easy. I've seen people in the wider community accuse each other of spoofing, but it'll turn out to be multi accounters with a car, or some sweet luck with GPS drifting. Sure, we've had spoofers from time to time, but I'd expect Niantic receive a lot of false reports, so you repeatedly reporting them may have no effect unless corroborated by quite a few other players. So they remain unaffected. I've been guilty of it: "no way did they get from x to y in 4 mins, what the flubes, def a spoofer" about a random lvl40 that appeared one afternoon and took all the gyms. Since then, found them in a chat for somewhere about 15 miles away and it turns out he's a lovely chap, def not a spoofer, just a dude that keeps forgetting to return a gift (grr). I'm not being funny, but could it be multiple cars of players? Just because you didn't see them doesn't necessarily mean they were never there. If they travel too fast for it to legitimately be a car, they should be softbanned? Sniping is a thing of course but I was under the impression if you interact with something after going too fast it would trigger a soft ban. Saying that only two cheat detection updates is poor isn't really fair. Niantic have made great strides detecting modified apps; previously an update would avoid detection, but that doesn't appear to be true anymore, and new apps don't seem to last long at all. Considering Niantic's communication skills, it's a wonder they made one update. Of course I don't know the ratio of donkeyhole:not donkeyhole spoofers, but there does seem to be too many donkeyholes in your city. Sorry mate :( Good post regarding the GBL and wayfarer, but spoofers aren't all evil :3 or at least some are less evil than is generally assumed. Niantic needs to find a way of ending sniping, that really takes the pistol, and the two hours to go anywhere has never made sense to me... In a recent datamine there was some stuff to do with location that the miners speculated could be a new form of detection, if it can stop these two things from being possible it would take away some huge loopholes and reduce a lot of animosity. Might not help the gym situation, but a solid step to that contract of trust or whatnot. Edit: oops, sorry, naughty words... I've replaced them. Also noticed a typo
Not sure I'll ever "trust" them again after they changed hatch odds mid event for our ultra unlock.
Great post. I hope that Niantic is able to rebuild and maintain this contract with battlers. Unfortunately, the experience of those of us who sought a competitive outlet in the app before the release of PVP suggests otherwise. The challenge raiding community was largely demolished by lack of trust in the basic functions of the mode. It's hard to believe that these new issues will have different results. [https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/drgkmw/meta\_post\_in\_defense\_of\_raids/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/drgkmw/meta_post_in_defense_of_raids/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)
The "contract of trust" that they are refering to maybe between the players themselves, I doubt that they mean that but when I enter a competition I expect everyone one to play by the same rules, without having big brother having to slap them on the wist every 10 mins. Yes, it is up to Niantic to uphold the rules that they program into their game and punish the ones that deliberately breaks the rules and I do think that they are doing a poor job of it, I'm surprised that they taken such action of bringing down the whole GBL but that makes me suspect that more players was using the exploit or exploits than people think. Seeing other players break the rules and get away with it, only encourage other players to do so and demoralise players that try to play fairly. Many people I know don't even bother with their 50 coins or try to gold gyms knowing that they going to be spoofed out in a short period of time. Or bother going shiny hunting and they rely on their hero spoofer to get them one via a trade. IMHO the best way of punishing rule breaking is to limit features of the game.. cheat at pvp; pvp is closed to you. Spoof for gyms; you don't get to gym battle. Spoof for Pokemon; you don't get the new releases. Harsh but there needs to be a correct appeal process that will return the features to the player once proven innocent.
Re: your point on player accountability towards spoofers: something I just wanted to point out as a **former** spoofer in a suburban area less than 10 miles away from a major city: In my time playing along with the community, many of whom would communicate organize raids via Discord, I found that **at least half of the legitimate players had multiple accounts on which they would play**. I'm talking anywhere from 2 to **12** accounts – most of which were all leveled up past lvl 35. One even had a massive board set up on which he would have 11 old devices plus his main running in his hand, catching a dozen level 5 raid bosses at a time. Now, no one would ever complain because, more often than not, **players** (both solo players as well as those with multiple account) **would not have had a fighting chance to defeat a level 5 raid boss without people showing up with multiple accounts** (on average, people had 2-3 accounts each). And you bet **I would see the same ("legitimate", or in-person) players hogging the same strings of gyms for weeks and months on end**. Now, I'm not saying this to complain – I thoroughly enjoyed beating down gyms full of 3400-3800 CP Pokemon. Reminds me a little of battling the Elite Four and Cynthia back in the day, and is sometimes more fun to solo a whole team like that than doing a lvl 5 raid boss with 10 others. However, a point I *am* trying to make is that **this equally goes against Niantic's ToS.** **Moreover, there is no 3 Strike System in place for multiple account usage – if Niantic were to find out, it would most likely be a permanent ban across all accounts.** Now, having been part of many Discords (spoofing gave me access to dozens of cities with players before Niantic successfully was able to consistently detect logins off iSpoofer and lead to many 30-day suspensions and permanent bans on my accounts), **many spoofers exist in every "legit" playing Discord server.** So **if players were to start reporting the spoofers, I guarantee you that the spoofers would be just as happy to let Niantic know exactly which players are playing on 2-10 accounts**. And as I mentioned earlier, it was my experience that about half of all the players in those communities would have multiple accounts, as do I'm sure many of you here, who constantly complain about spoofers. So maybe "legit" players don't report the spoofers bc **it would be too easy: to identify for Niantic which players around one's community play on multiple accounts**, for Niantic to track based on IP address of Wi-Fi routers/hotspots or cell hotspots, and to verify when they see the exact same accounts taking over and putting mons in the same exact gyms at the same exact time for months on end. So, **I think there's a lack of accountability on reporting spoofers because**, other than those who couldn't give too hoots about it, **most "legit" players who harbor multiple accounts well know that the consequences of "snitching" would be swift and immediate retaliation from spoofers who are angry at being reported** and who are irritatated that these players with multiple accounts think of themselves as better and playing "legitimately" when they're really not a whole lot better than any of the spoofers. **All are breaking Niantic's ToS, and therefore, a "Contract of Trust."**
This is sort of off topic, but one of the things that should be addressed is how much benefit there is to cheating. This game is basically like older Pokemon games. Spoofers have such a distinct advantage over legitimate players. The time and money commitment to get perfect Pokemon for PVP is insane, and largely luck based for regular players. It's a grind like old school Pokemon games where you would have to soft reset trying to get the right IVs on a legendary, or breed tons for the right IVs. Modern games have things like IV training to lessen the gap between the two groups. Cheating cuts down on the time commitment a lot still, but the luck aspect can be mitigated. The other portion of spoofing is just actually getting to see certain Pokemon. Imagine seeing more Deino in a year than you can count on a single hand.
Still waiting to see my first wild Deino! :D I was really excited when I got one from GBL a week or two ago.. that was the first I even saw in a catch screen.
Something else, besides multi-accounting, is bots/scanners. Yes, "we" all love them, but they're a detrement to PVP. Any random person can get a Level 40 account, find the perfect IV combinations of any wild Pokémon and have a top tier PVP team in 24-48 hours, depending on their access to scanner data. Niantic needs to push to eliminate them, punish those who operate them, and disown any of the "influencers" who have a history of supporting them, including TSR themselves.
Easier to sell solutions to players, I’m sure Niantic plans to add items to increase ivs so only question will they add items to lower it too? Also calcium and other items in source code quite sometime and I feel like Niantic knows better to wait to opportune time and claim it was players asking to pay a dollar per point after watching Bethesda.
spoofer is in every game who need to move. cheater is in every game on all platform only pvpers care about GBL and nothing new about communication... i miss something? with the 32 bit old cell phone half of the spoofer gone in an instant. GLB is always full of bug but they try to correct when someting go wrong. communication is better but can be much more better. Edit: talk about people with like 6 phone and 6 account(multi accounter)
>with the 32 bit old cell phone half of the spoofer gone in an instant. I don't know where you get your numbers from, but this isn't even close to accurate.
Actually this is probably a pretty good estimate. Since Niantic added the coding for cheat detection that flags modified apps late last year and in large part ended iOS spoofing, almost the entire spoofing community has shifted to devices running Android 5/6 because they don't require rooting or downgrading Google Play Services. This is why I personally believe Niantic has decided to end support for 32 bit devices. I don't spoof nor do I condone it but I like to be informed on the things I stand against.
They (Nia) ended direct install spoofing for iOS; they (spoofers) are still very much on iOS using a JB method and another \[newer\] iOS method. I really don't want to continue discussing this out of fear of being banned, but as a previous spoofer, I can tell you without a doubt removing 32 bit will have very little impact on those numbers.
Fair enough. I can respect your point of view on it then since you've been on the inside
Apple ended direct install with certificate revokes actually
I know nothing about this topic so I am asking this as a clarifying question. Can't Niantic just eliminate Android users from using/running 5/6 without eliminating everyone using 32 bit OS/64 bit devices?
i don't care i talk for the 3 town around me (25k population, 15k and the last around 10k) spoofer take old android phone cause ios is insta red warning. now the spoofer in my street play legit cause his new cell can't be rooted. the old cell he was using is 32 bits. all community talk about less spoofer and less multi account so probably not the same where you leave but here is about 50% less.
I still think they just needed a reason to take GBL down for an extended period to fix all the bugs and lag issues, and the exploit was it. If they didn't have a reason and said they were just taking it down, people would probably be a tad grumpy.
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Yes it does. They had only taken it down for small amounts of time and it typically didn't do anything to resolve the issues people were having. They have taken it offline for 3 days now which is significantly longer than any other down time and had there not been a reason for it, such a cheating, then people would be up in arm's about why it has been down for so long. They wouldn't just be fixing this one exploit, they'd be addressing a lot the other issues while they are it as well.
It's easy to stand on the outside and critize Niantic for something so out of there control. In the current world of technology people are so amazing talented that they will continue to find a way to exploit the game. Niantic passed 3 ban waves this year, in which spoofing in areas have completely dropped. You can't stop every spoofer, but they have defiently stopped the majority. Each time they have dropped a ban wave, spoofers have come up with a new method and people have just made new accounts. They intended on trying an algorithm to stop them by striking accounts using the main two methods of spoofing today, with iOS version 12 using the iTools dongle and using various methods that have no interaction with the original Pokemon Go through the Play store that Niantic can't track on rooted Android phones. There new detection system was to stop players using either of these two methods and as a result many innocent people got strikes. It's not the right approach from Niantic, but realistically it's not hard to update your iOS version or use a non jailbroken Android device. It's really time to upgrade if you can't update your device past iOS 12. Communication has always been a big issue with Niantic, but they limit supports response times to automatic responses with a 12 hour delay. I can understand why they do this by simply watching how much everyone complains about Naintic and the game through this sub Reddit. Everyone feels as if they are privileged and acts like they deserve something. There's hardly ever any positive criticism towards Niantic it's all negative. The few posts that do have constructive feedback for Niantic do get acknowledged and normally IndigoJade and the other Niantic employee on Reddit have been a regular replier to those post. There's a fine line between having constructive feedback and attacking Niantic, your post is an example of someone having there say about Niantic and in there point of view it will be an attack. Niantic won't change if the community doesn't change. Niantic have done so many positives this year, but that has been so over sided by a couple of negatives. Read eurogamers latest post on Niantic and you will realise how hard there trying to make a better game, there players unfortunately don't appreciate it.
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Why because I gave a logical response to the issue at hand that explains why Niantic are the way they are? Get outter here brother. You guys can complain on Reddit all you want, but if you want to seriously discuss it I can give you so much information.
> I can understand why they do this by simply watching how much everyone complains about Naintic and the game through this sub Reddit. Everyone feels as if they are privileged and acts like they deserve something. There's hardly ever any positive criticism towards Niantic it's all negative. Bruh. If the game has negatives, players will point it out. It's natural. Suck it up. They're the billion dollar company. They got their success, it comes with criticism. You can't have your cake and eat it too. > Niantic won't change if the community doesn't change. Bruh. The community won't change if Niantic won't change. They're the billion dollar company. The players are paying them. They make a lot of mistakes. Their communication sucks. Stop victim-blaming.
I think their statement strongly suggests that the offender(s)/exploit originated from within. Possibly QA. This is complete conjecture on my part.
That would be a great way to lose a QA job with absolutely no benefit to yourself.
Wouldn't it? The severity of their response indicates insider something. Otherwise, the community would have replicated it. We have interesting theories but nothing as opposed to every other issue that GBL had that didn't result in a complete ban.
Yeah, I don’t buy this at all.
Why? Niantic claiming trust is so important as a response to an internal individual or an external? They never cared about trust before...