Best Of
Players Concerns and the Path Moving Forward
Greetings Captains,
We acknowledge your concerns regarding potential cheating in the game and understand the frustration this has caused. Ensuring a fair and enjoyable experience for all players is our top priority.
Our development team and player support are actively investigating these reports, assessing various factors to identify and address the issue effectively. We want to assure you that we take these matters seriously, but a thorough investigation is essential before any decisive actions can be taken. Today we're meeting to discuss these issues and we will update you about our action plan. ⭐
We appreciate your patience and encourage you to continue reporting any suspicious activity through the appropriate channels. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us maintain the integrity of the game. 🙏
Thank you for your understanding and continued support. 🖖
Team at Star Trek Timelines, LLAP 💙
We acknowledge your concerns regarding potential cheating in the game and understand the frustration this has caused. Ensuring a fair and enjoyable experience for all players is our top priority.
Our development team and player support are actively investigating these reports, assessing various factors to identify and address the issue effectively. We want to assure you that we take these matters seriously, but a thorough investigation is essential before any decisive actions can be taken. Today we're meeting to discuss these issues and we will update you about our action plan. ⭐
We appreciate your patience and encourage you to continue reporting any suspicious activity through the appropriate channels. Your feedback is invaluable in helping us maintain the integrity of the game. 🙏
Thank you for your understanding and continued support. 🖖
Team at Star Trek Timelines, LLAP 💙
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
guest_1677442946962966 wrote: »~peregrine~ wrote: »I miss Shan. <heavy sigh>weakinteraction wrote: »I do think there are limits to how much they can tell us due to privacy and lega considerations, so we're unlikely to get answers to some of those questions.
However, I do think the point about the ship apparently having no one on the bridge or even on call for bridge duty for ... what, two weeks? ... is one that I would appreciate @STT Community weighing in on. What would have happened if there had been a game breaking bug during that time?
I know the first line Support is outsourced and I assume not all on holiday themselves - would they have been able to get hold of anyone at TP/WRG if they had to escalate a problem? (If so, perhaps those of us with cheating concerns should have been flooding them with tickets about it ...)
At this point, I would be happy to get answers to some of those questions.
I don't think legal or privacy considerations prevents them from responding at all, yet they still haven't done so.
If there had been a game breaking bug, they probably would have only noticed well after the fact. Given some sorrytons and thought that was sufficient.
I swear this company can't get out of their own way, and just do the bare minimum sometimes. Communication really isn't that hard.
Shan is gone because of the ego of one person. If you don’t know who to blame, you weren’t around for the “buy again” calamity.
One persons ego purged a significant amount of revenue from this game. And the community has never been the same.
I think Shan left of their own accord. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall, but I do not know. What is the basis for your statement regarding ego?
I was indeed here for the "buy again" calamity, and I thought it was abhorrent. Go back & read.
Finally, you make another claim about ego. Since you are posting under a guest account, I suppose that word doesn't apply to you, unless you are a long-time player who got banned. Hm, who could it be now?
...
Bashing on the devs might be satisfying, but perhaps we should remember that they (both of them) are people with feelings and do the work to keep this game up & running.
In no way am I excusing them, though. Cheating has been happening for years & the company gave minimal effort to address it. Ben & Joe ...
Do better.
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
(FF) Joe240 wrote: »Congratulations to the player ranked 4th for doing 55 second skirmish rounds! 5 battles 11 seconds each for 12 hours a day is impressive with this new bot system in place! The 3 and 9 hour marks being so close to the same is impressive:)
If you think dishonest gameplay is taking place, make sure to send in a ticket and your evidence. Otherwise, this is just textual gesticulation for rhetorical purposes.
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
~peregrine~ wrote: »I miss Shan. <heavy sigh>weakinteraction wrote: »I do think there are limits to how much they can tell us due to privacy and lega considerations, so we're unlikely to get answers to some of those questions.
However, I do think the point about the ship apparently having no one on the bridge or even on call for bridge duty for ... what, two weeks? ... is one that I would appreciate @STT Community weighing in on. What would have happened if there had been a game breaking bug during that time?
I know the first line Support is outsourced and I assume not all on holiday themselves - would they have been able to get hold of anyone at TP/WRG if they had to escalate a problem? (If so, perhaps those of us with cheating concerns should have been flooding them with tickets about it ...)
At this point, I would be happy to get answers to some of those questions.
I don't think legal or privacy considerations prevents them from responding at all, yet they still haven't done so.
If there had been a game breaking bug, they probably would have only noticed well after the fact. Given some sorrytons and thought that was sufficient.
I swear this company can't get out of their own way, and just do the bare minimum sometimes. Communication really isn't that hard.
I was thinking the exact same thing. With Shan, an effort was always made to communicate, and players felt heard.
Since, it's been abysmal.
IceCat
6
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
[HS] James wrote: »It's always been concerning that this Namer guy had access to unreleased data and could use it in a live environment. Everyone wants to overlook his past cheating because he did bigbook stuff but he doesn't hide his abilities. For example he posted this. This character would not even be in the vault until the day after his post and you can tell from the countdown that he had access to hit claim almost 11 days before it would be in the vault. Namer not being banned and being viewed as a hero by trying to gaslight and point to other players is frankly embarrassing in it's show of favoritism by the employees of developers of TPG.
Long post, sorry, but this is a long thread about a serious topic, and I intend for this to be my only comments on the subject, so I over-typed a bit.
Although it bothers me at a small level that not-yet-active game data can be accessed in this way, I believe you are mis-reading the example you posted. Namer appears to have had access to the offer graphics but not the actual offer (the timer is meaningless since that can always be reset before the live-server push). Jenos was joking when he said Namer should claim him (see: eyewink emoji). The FTM info for Phantasms Data shows that This Sisko1 immortalized him 3 days after this exchange between Namer and Jenos. As most players know, a card can show up in Dabo long before it shows up in the feature/event for which it is intended (which is why most FTMs are achieved by a relatively small set of players). This specific situation is not an example of cheating. (Do you imagine that 1) Namer and Jenos would discuss it on a public Discord channel, and 2) then having claimed the card, that Namer wouldn't have immortalized it himself?)
As someone that only uses an iPhone to play this game, I have always felt at a competitive disadvantage against the PC/Android/Steam players. If we still had access to the BigBook captain's rankings, you'd be able to see that this hasn't stopped me from ranking in the top 100 roughly 12-14 times per year. However, I know that I'll never win an event because I can't outspend some players (which is fine) and because there are always ways to cheat if one is determined enough (which is not fine). I won't bother tapping for extra hours trying to beat a bot/macro, or a shared-password situation. (I'm not suggesting that every winner or near-winner is doing that - just that if it is happening even occasionally, then that eliminates my interest in ever trying to compete at that level.)
While I'd like for the detailed info that prompted these accusations to be reviewable by all of us, the fact that the devs have banned a player based on that info (and presumably their own internal info) is sufficient for me to accept the allegation as being true. If you have equivalent proof of cheating by a player, please make your case to the devs (and to us, if you're so inclined). I'm 100% behind the goal of eliminating cheating, if it can be proven.
Cheating and the Path moving Forward
Greetings Captains,
We want to inform you about a recent decision taken to maintain a fair and enjoyable environment for all players. After thoroughly conducting an internal investigation, combined with team and player reports, we have identified a situation where a player was found using tools in a way that disrupted the competitive balance within our community and events.
As a result, we have issued a suspension of this player's account indefinitely. This decision was not taken lightly and reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring fairness and integrity in gameplay, especially during the holiday season.
We want to emphasize that any attempts to exploit or undermine the integrity of the game will result in appropriate penalties, as outlined in our guidelines. This is essential to maintaining the standards of fairness and respect that define our community. Additionally, today we would like to share some updates to our anti-macro system have gone live today. These improvements are designed to strengthen our ability to detect and address actions that could compromise the competitive experience for others.
We deeply appreciate the support and vigilance of our community in helping us uphold these standards. If you have any further concerns or observations, please reach out to our Customer Support, Community Team, and Moderation.
Thank you for your understanding and continued dedication to making this community a fantastic place for everyone. More information soon.
Best regards,
Team at Star Trek Timelines
LLAP
We want to inform you about a recent decision taken to maintain a fair and enjoyable environment for all players. After thoroughly conducting an internal investigation, combined with team and player reports, we have identified a situation where a player was found using tools in a way that disrupted the competitive balance within our community and events.
As a result, we have issued a suspension of this player's account indefinitely. This decision was not taken lightly and reflects our ongoing commitment to ensuring fairness and integrity in gameplay, especially during the holiday season.
We want to emphasize that any attempts to exploit or undermine the integrity of the game will result in appropriate penalties, as outlined in our guidelines. This is essential to maintaining the standards of fairness and respect that define our community. Additionally, today we would like to share some updates to our anti-macro system have gone live today. These improvements are designed to strengthen our ability to detect and address actions that could compromise the competitive experience for others.
We deeply appreciate the support and vigilance of our community in helping us uphold these standards. If you have any further concerns or observations, please reach out to our Customer Support, Community Team, and Moderation.
Thank you for your understanding and continued dedication to making this community a fantastic place for everyone. More information soon.
Best regards,
Team at Star Trek Timelines
LLAP
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
So they're saying one person cheating gets suspended while the other 50 or 100 a year that have been manipulating the system for years just get to go about their business as usual? This set no example. I don't often but have wondered how many legit supply or skirmish event winners there have actually been in the last 5 years.
In my opinion they shouldn't have been suspended at all. Implementing changes to avoid this in the future would have been fair. Kick all of them or none of them. Also I don't blame TP. These are the big spenders. They keep the lights on. If you're going to sit and cry because somebody wants to invest money into pushing for a number one I got news for you. Look at the world around you. It's brutal.
So far as the Big Book I think this was a good bs excuse to shut it down. Seems like it was taking a lot of time and effort to maintain and Namer got as good of an out as any. The whole I want to shut this down because of integrity is garbage to me because this stuff was going on before he even started it up.
Oh well y'all. This was just my opinion and like all others it's just shouting into the void and won't change anything that's transpired. I hope you all have a great week and LLaP.
In my opinion they shouldn't have been suspended at all. Implementing changes to avoid this in the future would have been fair. Kick all of them or none of them. Also I don't blame TP. These are the big spenders. They keep the lights on. If you're going to sit and cry because somebody wants to invest money into pushing for a number one I got news for you. Look at the world around you. It's brutal.
So far as the Big Book I think this was a good bs excuse to shut it down. Seems like it was taking a lot of time and effort to maintain and Namer got as good of an out as any. The whole I want to shut this down because of integrity is garbage to me because this stuff was going on before he even started it up.
Oh well y'all. This was just my opinion and like all others it's just shouting into the void and won't change anything that's transpired. I hope you all have a great week and LLaP.
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
DScottHewitt wrote: »I miss the"look ahead" from the Big Book presenting upcoming Crew. And DataCore was very helpful for both FBB and clearing useless Inventory for me.
"DataCore was very helpful..." — why past tense? DataCore is still up and running, and has been since Big Book was taken down (albeit not at 'full strength' since it relied to some extent on information gleaned from BB). But I am still using DC daily.
Re: Cheating… what’s TP doing about it?
Z•A•P•P ©™ wrote: »So they're saying one person cheating gets suspended while the other 50 or 100 a year that have been manipulating the system for years just get to go about their business as usual? This set no example. I don't often but have wondered how many legit supply or skirmish event winners there have actually been in the last 5 years.
In my opinion they shouldn't have been suspended at all. Implementing changes to avoid this in the future would have been fair. Kick all of them or none of them. Also I don't blame TP. These are the big spenders. They keep the lights on. If you're going to sit and cry because somebody wants to invest money into pushing for a number one I got news for you. Look at the world around you. It's brutal.
So far as the Big Book I think this was a good bs excuse to shut it down. Seems like it was taking a lot of time and effort to maintain and Namer got as good of an out as any. The whole I want to shut this down because of integrity is garbage to me because this stuff was going on before he even started it up.
Oh well y'all. This was just my opinion and like all others it's just shouting into the void and won't change anything that's transpired. I hope you all have a great week and LLaP.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. We know cheating happens, and if it’s suspected, send in a ticket like TP stated.
This doesn’t set an example? IMHO it seems to mark a shift from indifference to accountability. And yes, we can blame TP for that indifference which allowed those “…other 50 to 100 a year” to prosper without fear of repercussion. Will these current actions toward dishonest gameplay continue? Hopefully this shift is lasting, and not just done to placate.
No one is crying about money spent on the game, as that does help to “keep the lights on” as you put it. However, just because someone spends, doesn’t mean he or she gets a free pass (and plenty of people spend without cheating). Dishonest gameplay doesn’t belong, and TP needs to act on it when reported (and use tools to search it out). And, this isn’t an issue of someone “paying to win”, it’s about “cheating to win”. Spending money is allowed, bots and the like are not. And because the world isn’t fair, doesn’t preclude a game from trying to uphold some of the ideals of Trek.
As far as your comments about Namer, you’d have to ask him. It seems like we’ve all known cheating happens, and in this instance the cup was full, so someone said enough.
Every once in awhile we all need to shout into the void, and sometimes, the void answers back. LLAP 🖖.