Heavy Cheating on Windows PC platform

[Matina]

last week one "alliance", temp with only one player got 1752329 passengers. \
how is that possible?

 

[greensmith]

last week one "alliance", temp with only one player got 1752329 passengers. \
how is that possible?

@Matina,
It is only possible through cheating or spending a heck of a lot of real money. My bet is on cheating. And this problem is not only with Windows PC; it is rampant on iOS and Android as well. GI seems to be banning a couple of obvious cheaters, which is good. But it isn't enough. The Alliance game within Airport City is poorly conceived and poorly executed. I'm a star chaser who's goal is to get as many stars as I can. I'm part of an alliance that went all out the first week, using bonuses, stockpiles of fuel, Fuel Catalysts and passengers. We set timers so we could get as many Falcon flights as possible. Basically we worked our butts off for seven days only to come in around 40 and receive a Large Gift Set (5). After that we decided it wasn't worth the effort ... at least until GI does a lot more policing and awards the Alliance Maps to more players.
The long-term problem is that if there's no way I can earn stars for all of the Alliance destinations, I might as well just open Airport City once a day and not be serious about the game. There are a lot of fun games out there not developed by GI that aren't as buggy and frustrating: The Simpsons: Tapped Out and DomiNations to name two.
Cheers,
Tom

 

[Bob1977]

Good news, everyone!
The number of cheaters goes down week by week : 28 -> 21 -> 15 -> 8. Check the table.
It's hard to say whether they were pinned down by GI or just got bored to play but the fact is:
fair players get their chance for gold back!
Some cheaters disappeared completely (or changed their nicks), others still play but quite harmless.

 

[lrob]

The group I am playing with (30 users or so) in NL, reported to GI a lot of times with hardcopies, excel sheets and so on, and every time the response was: the user you mentioned is NOT cheating.
Only one user was removed, a user with more than 20 hangars, no residents and high in the top 100. now, we see in the alliances the top 10 last week contained (with a max of 8 users) over 5 million passengers. we have to work hard, with 4 users to get over 150.000 (I know, that is not too much),
so we give up to report anything to GI. Its also very nice with flights, the whole week to be number one with 150flights , and on Friday a user gets from 0 to 850 in an hour (could have been offline, but again, 850?)
user: lrob - Ipad IOS - lvl 60 - 347 stars - 3 years playing.

 

[Bob1977]

I gave up reporting cheaters in PC version. Simply watching them coming and going.
It seems they took their rest for a while, but I'm sure they'll come back with renewed effort for alliances in the next update.

 

[M22]

The group I am playing with (30 users or so) in NL, reported to GI a lot of times with hardcopies, excel sheets and so on, and every time the response was: the user you mentioned is NOT cheating.
Only one user was removed, a user with more than 20 hangars, no residents and high in the top 100. now, we see in the alliances the top 10 last week contained (with a max of 8 users) over 5 million passengers. we have to work hard, with 4 users to get over 150.000 (I know, that is not too much),
so we give up to report anything to GI. Its also very nice with flights, the whole week to be number one with 150flights , and on Friday a user gets from 0 to 850 in an hour (could have been offline, but again, 850?)
user: lrob - Ipad IOS - lvl 60 - 347 stars - 3 years playing.

I single handedly can do 250000 passengers in a couple of hours using the right bonuses and fuel. Hundreds of flights to a couple of destinations...

 

[Bob1977]

You won't tell how you do it exactly, I suppose.
What kind of bonus allows to build 10 Planetariums?

 

[Cosmic Blue]

You won't tell how you do it exactly, I suppose.
What kind of bonus allows to build 10 Planetariums?

IT was not a bonus but a bug about year or so back that allowed people to build 10 buildings but GI fixed the problem in the next update back to six but allowed people who have built the extra buildings to keep them and still reap the rewards.

 

[Kris]

I have noticed a lot of cheating too going on. I beginning to think that is the reason behind the PC users not being able to visit neighbors. Its kind of funny how everything works that has to do with making purchases still works, but nothing to do with collecting freebies from neighbors. I myself pay money to buy greenies, but I will never pay 20 greenies just to get a launch Item. I usually wait to get from neighbors.

 

[Bob1977]

I single handedly can do 250000 passengers in a couple of hours using the right bonuses and fuel. Hundreds of flights to a couple of destinations...

Having got several THOUSANDS fuel barrels? No problemo. The problem is to stack so many and you can't make this punch every day.
Top cheaters burnt over 10000 standard Fuel20 barrels a week at very very least.
I collect Fuel20 all the time and get about 500 barrels in a month, so I can shoot such firework, say, once a year?

Anyway, cheaters' activity's dropped and it's a good time to mine some gold until they get back with full force.
They're like weather - we can do almost nothing about them, just wait, watch, think and plan our actions accordingly. At least some good comes out of my observation. With Anderl down most of heavier planes routes are free for fair racing. Damn, I'm stuck with Jets until I get 1st and 2nd Adventures complete. Jet airlines are a little crowded still.

 

[Bob1977]

Week 48 is over.
The number of cheaters goes up this time : 28 -> 21 -> 15 -> 8 -> 17. Check the table.
The famous Anderl is still here and plays quite modestly like a common fair player.
But there is another top cheater "АЛЕКС" with 4886 flights, 4 millions passengers and over 300000 units of fuel burnt (over 15000 barrels Fuel 20). "yuzu" is not far behind.

 

[Bob1977]

I'm actually tired of counting cheaters in the PC rankings. It's interesting to monitor their activity but takes too much time.

 

[GiftXchange]

meet another hero:

 

[Bob1977]

There's nothing can be done about it unfortunately.
Me and other people who reported cheaters over and over again did what we could.

 

[GiftXchange]

Free2Play I want to report another suspicious player scoring badly in a short time:

Player um has the following flights summary during only Wednesday-Thursday:
Caracas: 29 (top 2)
Plesetsk: 115 (top 2)
Oslo: 10 (+31 score progress, top 2)
Johannesburg: 34 (top 1)
Toronto: 42 (+31 score progress, top 1)
Tortuga: 26
Helsinki: 32 (+94 score progress)
Melbourne: 30 (top 1)
Havana: 30 (top 1)

Cape Town 11 (top 3)
Nice 172 (top 3)
Berlin 58 (top 1)

Total Passengers amount used approx.: 159.400

There were no traces of this user at Monday, he show up only last 2-3 days.

I believe you might program a simple check - if any single user scores the very top in 4-5 cities at once - he must be automatically suspended and watched for cheating.

PS: please repost this to GI facebook so they surely see it.

 

[greensmith]

The cheaters are not just on Windows. Here on iOS/Android, after 24 hours of the Alliance Game resetting, one team has 3,145,464 passengers. Over three million in one day!
The alliance team I am in has not had that many passengers in the total six weeks we've been playing. How are we supposed to take this game seriously if GI/404 can't police the game they created.
My opinion: If you don't have the staff to police the game, shut it down! Otherwise you lose all your credibility and we players start to wonder why we put so much effort into a game that's obviously rigged.
Cheers,
Tom

 

[M22]

The cheaters are not just on Windows. Here on iOS/Android, after 24 hours of the Alliance Game resetting, one team has 3,145,464 passengers. Over three million in one day!
The alliance team I am in has not had that many passengers in the total six weeks we've been playing. How are we supposed to take this game seriously if GI/404 can't police the game they created.
My opinion: If you don't have the staff to police the game, shut it down!
Cheers,
Tom

We have a lot of good players in that team!

 

[greensmith]

We have a lot of good players in that team!

@M22
Yes, you do. Won't you share your "how we did it" story with us so we can learn from your example?
Cheers,
Tom

 

[M22]

I haven't flown many of those passengers but I have had a hungover day flying quite a few falcons. Some complaints about cheating though are quite doable for big players. As I've said before, the golden spanner thing to minimise breakdown, matryoska doll, family ticket and secret faucet plus fuel from space flights make several hundred thousand possible in a couple of hours.

 

[M22]

I forgot alarm clock and jet pack