Splinterlands

Psychology of Gaming Cheats

A long, long time ago I used to play FPS - namely Ghost Recon series and Battlefield. I was pretty good at them and especially for Ghost Recon, would often get accused of cheating by people I was pwning. Of course, online in these kinds of games, there is no way to really know who is on the other side of the screen, or what kind of person they are. But for me, gaming cheats are,

Fucking pathetic.

Experiencing this and playing alongside one of my brothers who was also accused, we would discuss various factors around it, including the psychology of those cheating, and those who are being accused. I think these discussions really fed into my love for understanding human behaviour and motivations, and the gaming ecosystem was a great learning platform, with a host of situations and often repetitive players with unique ID names to analyse. It was a great time with lots of brilliant conversations. However, what it also did was make me pretty good at seeing patterns in gameplay that might indicate cheating.

Cheater Reasons:

Revenge

This was a common one against my brother and I, where players getting owned would drop out of the game and then come back in a minute or two later with their various hacks like aimbots, speed and see through walls activated and then start running around targeting us. Sometimes, we would come into a server and they would do this before we even started to own them. If there was an admin they would kick them out, but often there were not, making the server unplayable and no fun. We would just go to one of the other servers.

Internal and External

This is an interesting one, because those driven by intrinsic (internal) motivation like having fun playing the game like my brother and I, see cheating negatively. However, those driven by extrinsic (external) motivation like winning or rewards are more likely to justify their cheating as a means to an end. It isn't about the journey to get there, only what they get out of it. When there is anonymity and rewards in the game, the likelihood to cheat increases.

Ego

Let's face it - some people are just losers. So when they don't have the ability to compete but feel they deserve to win, they will often resort to cheating in order to do so. These are the most pathetic of the bunch, because they are cheating to make themselves feel better about being a loser.

Experimentation

And of course, there are the experimenters, who will only identify themselves as experimenting, once they get caught. Sure, some people might like to see how games can be broken and perhaps there are those who are also just bored, but it is rarely a good excuse to cheat as an experiment unless you are a game developer or work for the game. The amount of people who said "I was just experimenting to see..." is high. But only when they get caught.

What I do play

I don't play FPS anymore, because I am too slow on a mouse and keyboard, and especially after the stroke, my fingers don't do what I want them to do all of the time. I still play Splinterlands, because it doesn't require speed or dexterity. However, it is a game that is pretty much solely driven by rewards, since the gameplay itself hasn't changed much since at least I started playing five years ago. And I think it hadn't changed much since the start. The economy of it has changed a lot and the game itself has comes a distant second in importance, or third... maybe fourth.

Over the years cheating has mostly come in the form of bots and battle-helpers and since there was no way to combat them, they changed the gameplay and terms and conditions for players. However, because it is a reward economy, the incentive to cheat is still high and there is little oversight from what I can tell. I don't know who is cheating or how they are monitoring if people are, but I am sure there are people trying or who have successfully managed to find work arounds. Especially when it comes to things like battle helpers. Evaluating their gameplay metrics like when they submit relative to others, or when playing a bot, or a human account, might uncover patterns.

It is also interesting because scholar accounts are more visible, so what happens if a scholar played account gets caught cheating? In my opinion, the scholar should be banned but more importantly, the played account itself should also be banned, or punished severely and have rewarded assets taken away, with whatever they have bought with Glint also removed - and their exemplar reset. As well as whatever else, because as the owner, it is up to them to be mindful of who is playing their account.

They say that Cheaters never prosper but I disagree, because if their motivation is to make reward gains and no one is checking or holding them accountable, they are prospering.

No one cheats in crypto, right?

Have patience

Since I don't write about Splinterlands much these days at all, on an unrelated note in terms of top accounts which are nearly all played by scholars, a pattern I have seen is that pretty much no matter how long I wait, they will submit after me. They play 2300+ battles a season and have been playing a long time, so there is no reason for them to be umming and aahing about what to play, especially in easy game criteria. Not only that, they have insanely, insanely good RNG "luck".

I have experimented a bit with this over the last several months and find that it is about 20 seconds after I submit that they submit. If I wait a very long time, they will submit before me. So that is what I do and as a result, my winrate has increased against them. And I have very bad RNG "luck". This is the same with the God-0 bot account, which I have been told "takes longer" because it is AI, but it seems to ´have a similar submission pattern. Submit early and it will not be too far behind. Submit late, and it will not be too far behind.

I would love to see the statistics on RNG across accounts, as well as which accounts get rewarded the most in the weekly prizes etc, and of course the submission patterns. At the very least, it would give the team some insights into the gameplay and mechanics.

Anyway.

For those who are playing against top scholar accounts (I have played against them thousands of times even when they are rated far, far higher than me), I suggest setting your team and being patient and letting the counter drop to about 30 seconds before submitting it. Take the extra time to review what you are thinking. If using Archons with tactics, don't go to the tactics page until there is only the thirty seconds left - as you will still have the time to submit the tactics anyway. Experiment with it. Have fun and perhaps it will bring a bit of gamification into the gameplay for you. See if you notice any patterns in the way people play, not just in the teams they submit. Also, pay attention to RNG across different accounts you play regularly and see if there are any patterns there. Be objective.

It might not make a difference to whether you win or lose, or it might. However, what it definitely will do is put a bit of frustration into the game for the scholars, as the difference of waiting an extra minute per season per game, is around 2300 minutes or, over thirty eight hours. That is a week at a full time job. And that is just on the three accounts we can see them play on. That should raise some question in itself, right? Of course, the bot accounts they play will submit when they submit, but still, make each win for them more expensive to get, and each loss for you more expensive for them - just like you would in a game of tennis or poker.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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Comments · 11

@chinito(74)· 18h
You were a gamer? Yeah me too back in the day. I am more of a turn-based strategy guy.

I guess people have to do justify them. Their losses you'd want is to admit yourself as just suck!
@seattlea(78)· 20h
This is a very interesting post! Especially the part about top scholars, I think that leaderboard should not be showing the same scholar taking up three of the top ten positions, that is ridiculous and the leaderboard rewards should be distributed to only one of the three accounts driven by the scholar, perhaps that will encourage people to use different scholars like a scholar will be exclusive per account.

Interesting that you noticed those patterns, I have not, but I will definitely use your tips of waiting as I play those scholars all season long :(
@saydie(77)· 20h
Submitting team in under 30 seconds was also how I usually play. Just got to do something else while letting the time pass, hoping that my opponent would quickly pick up their team and place tactics on their cards without knowing my lineup. Could piss off other players, but the idea of Splinterlands being a fast-paced auto battler card game has gone when they introduced tactics, plus the long matchmaking time because of low player liquidity. I don't think waiting for too long really matters to scholars, though, if it is their full-time job.
@emmanuel50(70)· 21h
I’m still very new to Splinterlands, so honestly I’m still trying to understand how everything works. When I first started playing, I was completely confused by the interface, and I even went to YouTube to watch videos on how to play. I’m still learning, and I’ve now started playing Frontier too. I just hope I can understand the game much better with time.
@avataraang1(62)· 22h
I agree with the point about cheating ruining the actual experience of gaming. Winning is obviously nice, but when someone uses hacks or bots, they basically remove the whole point of competing, i remember encountering a hacker while playing codm, i was shooting and it was doing absolutely no damage. I'm like how do you even enjoy the game when you know their is absolutely no competition
@owasco(73)· 23h
I know nothing about these games, any of them. Never played a single one. So I can't comment on the topic of your post, but I did just read a post on Hive about the oldest female streaming gamer in the world. That's all I've got. Love that dog pix! Who is it?
@storicious(69)· 23h

Ghost Recon series

Tom Clancy Ghost Recon Phantom. I still remember my neighbor was playing it on his PC. I had Pantium 3, so it did not use to work on mine. And I used to go to his house just to play one or two matches. I was 12-years of age at that time. Then a whole lot of series followed, and I became a mediocre gamer. Still play stuff, but not the same like back in teenage life.

And for cheating. Isn't it the best compliment :)

the gaming ecosystem was a great learning platform

Gaming really brings out benefits such as reflexes, observational skills, creative and critical thinking etc.

Cheaters? Pain in the @ss! FPS games are still so full of these people, but there is still fun. Losers in life; losers in games.

Not the type of comment, I was expxecting to write. But that Ghost Recon really brought out nostalgia. Moreover, I haven't tried Splinterlands yet, maybe some day.

Have fun!
@fieryfootprints(75)· 23h
I used to play some strategy games like Civilization 3(this one I sometimes played together with my dad) or Heroes of might and magic 3. These days I prefer single player story focused games. I was never into multiplayer/ competitive gaming(except splinterlands). I think that even years ago my reaction was not good enough for that so I would just waste of my nerves.

But I think that trading is also a bit like gaming/ gambling. Just more risky and complex. I saw this post Those profits look really good but I think that I prefer more ,,stable'' investment like Hive. I may not earn a fortune with Hive but at least I will be less likely to go bankrupt by investing in Hive than by trading futures. ~~or at least going bankrupt will take longer while investing in Hive...~~😛
@nabbas0786(70)· 23h
When we keep these things in mind and play any game against anyone, we are more likely to win. Because if we just start playing with our mouths open for no reason, even if we win, it won't be fun.

Revenge Ego

These two are the basic things to have in mind before going for any of work, a game or for any daily life task.
@bozz(83)· 23h
I never really understood the battle helpers. I feel like there is barely enough time to submit your team anyway, let alone reference a battle helper and then do it as well. If it makes you feel any better, take a look at my post from today. I do use a bot in Wild, but if you compare the winrate to the manual games I played in modern, I did much better myself versus the bot. I use it mostly because I am lazy, and I don't have the time or focus to sit and wait for match after match to be submitted. It was a fun experiment to play around with modern and I might do more of that in the future, but as far as the bot I use in wild, it seems to be a case of quantity over quality.
@splinterboost(59)· 1d
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Fucking pathetic.