Windows Cheaters - What's being done about it

[Scott Blood]

Back on topic:
First, to judge what's being done about it, we have to consider what can be done about it. And the answer is: not much, sadly.

There is on huge difference between mobile AC and most other mobile and Facebook games: It is an offline game with bit of optional online elements. Once can never get it as cheatproof as eg. World of Warcraft, which happens on a secure server with clients merely displaying the results. With AC, you can take your phone into the wilderness for 6 days, do all your flights offline and then return to civilization on Sunday, upload a week worth of scores and then "suddenly" win the ranking. This means that it's almost as vulnerable to cheating as offline games, when we used hex editors as kids to change a byte to 0xFF to get 255 of gold.
There are buildings and planes, there is warehouse of passenger and fuel bonuses, one can buy those with greens, one can buy "pay to win" flights with greens, there are green-producing buildings - the point is there are so many legit ways of achieving 10Mpax/week that it's nearly impossible to say "beyond all doubts, this score must be result of cheating". And banning people without proof is even less acceptable than letting cheaters go unpunished.

It would be imaginable to drop the offline feature, cut of many of players who play on long flights. It would be imaginable to create a server which could retrace all possible action the way Deep Blue could and sometimes come with conclusive proof of cheating. But it's not a job for one programmer to add one "if". It's hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work. It's quite possible that it would be cheaper to simply declare the game a total loss and shut it down rather than to make it considerably more cheatproof.

Is GI doing something to eliminate cheaters? Yes, a bit. You can report, they'll look after it and most often they come with false negative. Sometimes they ban people, but false positives also happen (like Cow.reborn).
Are they doing everything possible? No, but it's not reasonable to expect that. It's simply not economically viable.

Besides that, people like @Kesh who updated on Windows Phone report that the game has become very unstable and crashes often. So even if one manages to get a supported OS on old hardware, it's highly likely that new improved graphics will make that hardware insufficient anyway.

I have it running on an original surface pro with the current windows insider build. yes the animations are sluggish on it and on occasions it does crash if you attempt to do too many things at once, however I would say most of this is due to this being a very early build of windows still full of debug symbols and un-optimised code. That being said, I still think they will issue the update to all windows 10 users otherwise the windows 10 eco system will become fractured like many past version of windows and the whole point of windows 10 is to get everyone on the same code base, but it is a long path.

 

[Wasted Eagle]

I have it running on an original surface pro with the current windows insider build.

Wow wow! Alright, now in plain English, nerds! How do I run my game back on my first gen Windows Surface RT 32Gb?

 

[Agent_L]

@Wasted Eagle don't get your hopes high.

I have it running on an original surface pro with the current windows insider build.

Surface Pro is an actual PC, x86. You could always install a real Windows on it and it has official upgrade to Win10 since Win10 came out.
It's the RT that's the problematic one, as it has more in common with a phone than with a PC.

 

[Scott Blood]

@Wasted Eagle don't get your hopes high.

Surface Pro is an actual PC, x86. You could always install a real Windows on it and it has official upgrade to Win10 since Win10 came out.
It's the RT that's the problematic one, as it has more in common with a phone than with a PC.

Sorry should of mention RT for Arm emulation is turn on in the developer options for this device, so all in all this is behaving like an RT based device. However I will give it a plod on a surface next week when I am back in to work

 

[Wasted Eagle]

@Wasted Eagle don't get your hopes high.

Surface Pro is an actual PC, x86. You could always install a real Windows on it and it has official upgrade to Win10 since Win10 came out.
It's the RT that's the problematic one, as it has more in common with a phone than with a PC.

That it has a normal desktop with DOS based paths doesn't help?

 

[Agent_L]

That it has a normal desktop with DOS based paths doesn't help?

an ARM DOS?
ABOMINATION !!

Seriously, if you don't have any more important data on it, you should try joining the Insider program and install the Win10. Any tips or guides, @Scott Blood ?

 

[Wasted Eagle]

Anywho, it makes a good rigid coaster for my Champagne this evening...

Now, back on topic!

 

[Scott Blood]

an ARM DOS?
ABOMINATION !!

Seriously, if you don't have any more important data on it, you should try joining the Insider program and install the Win10. Any tips or guides, @Scott Blood ?

Most important tip is don't do it unless you can afford to lose the device on a regular basis the current insider build 14971, is bug ridden to the point the device I am trying it on is constantly being rebuilt. However if you don't mind that, they join away. the quickest way to do it is to

• Go to https://insider.windows.com/ and sign up and accept there liability agreements.
• Go to windows update settings, click Preview builds.
• Click Check now.
• Once it finds that there is a new build available, click Download The update will start downloading. they are massive though so be patient.

You will eventually be given the option to Install the new build.

If you can afford the money an MSDN account will allow you to download an ISO version of these, but to be honest unless your a developer for Microsoft products its pretty pointless.

 

[Wired Parrott]

Just update you gold monger.
I know...... that will never happen.

 

[Agent_L]

Just update you gold monger.
I know...... that will never happen.

It's not about gold tokens anymore. It's more about tranquility of playing two-man game with Nicks now : )

 

[Kesh]

It's not about gold tokens anymore. It's more about tranquility of playing two-man game with Nicks now : )

It's good that both of you are on the forum, you can agree in advance who will takes each destination without wasting any extra resource.
Did you tested who is first when you both do 1 launch together?

 

[Agent_L]

It's good that both of you are on the forum, you can agree in advance who will takes each destination without wasting any extra resource.
Did you tested who is first when you both do 1 launch together?

He's on PC, I'm on phone.
But tested with my phone drone, the time of collecting lander counts.

 

[Wasted Eagle]

It's not about gold tokens anymore.

So you're not updating when CBM arrives?

 

[Kesh]

So you're not updating when CBM arrives?

Depends if the offer will be visible for not updated games

 

[Agent_L]

So you're not updating when CBM arrives?

Best (for me) case scenario is that I'll get CBM at old prices while you'll get them at new, improved pricing.

But so far the most likely outcome is that CBM will never come, Nicks will get new Windows on his Surface, and I'll have no other option but to upgrade.

 

[Wasted Eagle]

But so far the most likely outcome is that CBM will never come...

Yeah, that's probably true.

The longer GI waits with CBM, the more prepared we are, the bigger splash we can make when they arrive and the slimmer the chance they throw them in the game again.

Or the prices will be ridiculous: Casinos starting at current Mint prices or something in that order...

 

[Agent_L]

Yeah, that's probably true.

The longer GI waits with CBM, the more prepared we are, the bigger splash we can make when they arrive and the slimmer the chance they throw them in the game again.

Or the prices will be ridiculous: Casinos starting at current Mint prices or something in that order...

Well, look how much price of Falcon S2 went up. I expect nothing less.

 

[AJ]

the prices will be ridiculous

Why not? One mint can completely change the city of any player( It will take time as well but still), Ridiculous cost for the thing which can resolve the biggest issue of everyone is fine.
I would even pay 500 Gold Tokens for a mint on my secondary games.

 

[Kesh]

Well, look how much price of Falcon S2 went up. I expect nothing less.

Casino went from 10/100 to 100/800, bank from 20/400 to 200/800 and mint from 60/800 to 200/2000.
Now you can imagine that if introduced price will be huge for all 3.

 

[Agent_L]

Casino went from 10/100 to 100/800, bank from 20/400 to 200/800 and mint from 60/800 to 200/2000.
Now you can imagine that if introduced price will be huge for all 3.

Falcon S2 went from 20/200 to 80/800 AFAIK : D