TNT makes HUGE changes and squashes cheaters!

[hrtbrk]

From their notice board, released about 20 minutes ago. Word is spreading like wildfire.

 

What do you guys think of the new format?

 

 

The Altador Cup Rules Committee has been keeping a careful eye on player performance this year, and it has come to their attention that a disease has been spreading among some participants. Symptoms include multiple personality disorder and temporary feeling of supernatural or magical performance in the games. In order to stop the spread of this plague, we have quarantined the affected players (and their scores), which have initially caused a dramatic upheaval to some overall team scores. We do expect these to stabilize as we move forward and remove quarantined players from the tournament. We will also continue to monitor other teams closely to make sure that all others stay healthy and unaffected by this plague. No other changes have been made to how the results are tallied, so uninfected players can and should keep playing normally for their teams.

In other news, now that round 1 has come to a close, we are excited to announce a new ending to this year's Cup. Round 5, instead of being another round of regular gameplay, will be a Finals Bracket! The top 6 teams will be placed into one bracket to battle it out for the top spot, teams ranked 7-12 in the next bracket, and 13-18 in the final bracket. The stakes are higher than ever to make sure your team performs well throughout the next few rounds. Each bracket will be worth different amounts, so winning the top bracket will earn more bracket points than the top spot in the second bracket, which will earn more than the last.

Game on, Neopians! This is shaping up to be one of the most dramatic Altador Cups yet!

http://www.neopets.com/neoboards/topic.phtml?topic=158102691

[jellysundae]

HAHA! I LOVE the euphemisms in the editorial :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley:

 

The changes are interesting! I wonder how much of a difference they're going to make.

 

But honestly, MASSIVE kudos to Jumpstart for actually doing something to try and counter the cheaters. The reaction to this is gonna be...intense, to say the very least...

[Songbirdsara]

Holy wow! Massive kudos to Jumpstart for implementing such a dramatic smack down to the cheaters! Can't wait to see how this shakes up the tournament.

[nicolelouise]

HAHA! I LOVE the euphemisms in the editorial :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley:

 

The changes are interesting! I wonder how much of a difference they're going to make.

 

But honestly, MASSIVE kudos to Jumpstart for actually doing something to try and counter the cheaters. The reaction to this is gonna be...intense, to say the very least...

So...since this is a GOOD thing, are you expecting crowds cheering and waving their arms or wailing and gnashing of teeth or what?  I mean, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of wherever it is the cheaters get together to plot and scheme, but I imagine they aren't putting it about all over Neopets itself, so I won't get to see that.  Do you think it's more going to be the civil libertarians who will be up in arms about people potentially being unfairly 'quarantined' or just the general population of players being upset at what some might see as Big Brother-ish behaviour?  (Which, to me, is ridiculous because they ARE watching and have every right to do so and just as much right to take action.)

 

I, personally, am all for it.  Even if I was wrongly suspended from play, I would be OK with it.  I suspect, however, that my magnanimous attitude may stem from the fact that I've never participated in the AC before and don't know the stakes before me. :P

[Mouseykins]

It's about time they did something to combat the cheaters. It gives the rest of us a fighting chance at winning some rounds. :)

[Hannah.]

I am really glad that Jumpstart did this! Some of the cheating really frustrated me last year.

[Aquamentis12]

THIS IS AWESOME! :D Jumpstart seems to not only be TRYING to gain credibility with us, it's customers, but they're actually WORKING to regain our trust! Maybe this will be a turning point for Neo? It would be nice if they could clean out any number of those with "symptoms"! XD

[jellysundae]

So...since this is a GOOD thing, are you expecting crowds cheering and waving their arms or wailing and gnashing of teeth or what?

 

Totally both :laughingsmiley: The more immature cheaters are gonna be mad, butthurt will abound in many quarters. For the more dedicated they are probably already working on finding ways around this, because that's what hardcore cheaters do; they see this kind of thing as a challenge.

 

For us non-cheaters, yep, lots of this kind of stuff -> :dance:

 

I mean, I'd love to be a fly on the wall of wherever it is the cheaters get together to plot and scheme, but I imagine they aren't putting it about all over Neopets itself, so I won't get to see that. 

 

 

Oh gosh yeah, I went to look at a cheaters' forum that I found last year, but because they're a cheaters' forum they block a visitor's ability to view the forum after a certain amount of views, and I clearly hit that number when I was looking before the games started to see if there was any hint to what team they were picking this year. So I'm out of luck there. :laughingsmiley:

 

Do you think it's more going to be the civil libertarians who will be up in arms about people potentially being unfairly 'quarantined' or just the general population of players being upset at what some might see as Big Brother-ish behaviour?  (Which, to me, is ridiculous because they ARE watching and have every right to do so and just as much right to take action.)

 

I, personally, am all for it.  Even if I was wrongly suspended from play, I would be OK with it.  I suspect, however, that my magnanimous attitude may stem from the fact that I've never participated in the AC before and don't know the stakes before me. :P

 

I honestly don't know. I think I'll settle for mainly magnanimous, until personally affected, lol! Because, as you say, it's an easy way to feel about something if it's not impacting on you. Right up until you log in and find your account frozen >_<

 

There's absolutely going to be a whole lot of righteous indignation on behalf of "totally innocent" friends. My advice? Get the popcorn in and setting down to be entertained. in the very worst reality TV kind of way. :laughingsmiley:

[MysteryAF]

Thank you JumpStart for upholding the phrase cheaters never win.

 

It becomes ridiculous when the top 3 teams got there because of cheaters, and I feel like this should've been monitored a lot sooner.

[jellysundae]

At a guess, JS have been working on this since last year's cup. Kiko Lake's ridiculously high scores will have alerted them to the level of cheating that can happen. I'm really glad that they've put things in place this year. Whether what they've done actually works to stop the cheating remains to be seen, of course, but if it doesn't...I'm pretty confident now that they'll continue working on ways to stop it.

[AlwaysProcrastinating]

I'm really pleased that they're combating the cheating :) That being said, I've never actually paid enough attention to any of the results to even notice that some players were cheating :nerd:

 

But it's a win for the good guys so I'm really pleased 

[Hannah.]

At a guess, JS have been working on this since last year's cup.

 

That would make sense.  Perhaps they have been developing the techniques through the year and implemented them this year when they were happy with whatever programming technique they developed.  I imagine they are very cautious to place the infected users into quarantine.  They don't want to falsely place a healthy user there.  And 5-6 days worth of data on those scores is probably enough to figure that out.

[jellysundae]

That would make sense.  Perhaps they have been developing the techniques through the year and implemented them this year when they were happy with whatever programming technique they developed.  I imagine they are very cautious to place the infected users into quarantine.  They don't want to falsely place a healthy user there.  And 5-6 days worth of data on those scores is probably enough to figure that out.

 

Yeah, that kind of time frame is what I was thinking too, I wonder if we'll actually get to find out if the counter measures have worked...

[NixtheWatcher]

Well, people are already starting to accuse Brightvale and Tyrannia of cheating, so let's see if Jumpstart can verify the claims.

[just4dailies]

HAHA! I LOVE the euphemisms in the editorial :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley: :laughingsmiley:

 

The changes are interesting! I wonder how much of a difference they're going to make.

 

But honestly, MASSIVE kudos to Jumpstart for actually doing something to try and counter the cheaters. The reaction to this is gonna be...intense, to say the very least...

Last year was my first time participating so I really didn't have a clue about this issue, but I do love their way of addressing it in euphemisms & it is neat to see them taking action.

[rntracy1]

Well, people are already starting to accuse Brightvale and Tyrannia of cheating, so let's see if Jumpstart can verify the claims.

It is soooooo obvious by the scores that Brightvale is cheating.  Do you know if JS is looking into it at least?  Verifying it is another issue, but at least if they are looking into it, they can't think those scores are legit.  As far as Tyrannia, IDK, just because a team is in 1st place, doesn't mean anything.  People are going to accuse no matter what.