Arena Rank Cheat

I posted a comment about this cheat to Central and their system would not allow me to post with a link in it so I will go about informing them yet again today if time permits.

I had recorded video of the arena setup to duplicate this cheat. But I'm going to add only one video as the others require editing for length and this story needs to get out for the sake of all arena goers.

Backstory:
This that came to light courtesy of the two wonderful guys (previously posted about) who first gave my team an in-your-face "taste" of the results and had a good laugh at our expense. Many of my friends had reported to me significant point losses in some battles. I wasn't sure what to make of it until I saw it first hand and my internal cheat-meeter went clear off the charts.

The use of this cheat has become so prolific as to catch nearly everyone during an evening dueling in the arena on a nightly basis. The fact that it was becoming more and more common made me realize it was more than just a random bug.

For Clarification:
This is NOT the rank "borking" that Overlords do to get matches where they have one of their buddies lose all their points and average their team down lower so they can get matches. (Which some say is neccessary but still suspect) I'm talking about an actual cheat that doesn't involve dropping your rank of your dueling character at all.

Theory:
Arena is now set to average players ranks that are playing in the same battle and try to match them with similarly ranked players.

How It's Done:
Note this is not to explain how its done so you can do it... this is an explanation of the bug so that KI can reproduce and fix it. Hopefully sooner than later. If the bug/cheat is public then it should motivate them to fix it sooner than later.

1) make a noob on a separate account
2) battle the noob and purposely lose until their rating is close to or exactly Zero
3) have the noob make a multi-player battle for your super high ranked buddies
4) as your friends begin to join your noob leaves the battle
5) you log in as your grand master and join the battle as well
6) wait for your victim team to join
7) try to beat them so you will gain 20+ points, but losing is no big deal since you lose maybe 4 points
8) do this for a couple days, beating up on low ranked teams and pick up your Wings or your Cape that you "earned" by "working your way to the top"

Below, notice the whopping 21 points awarded for beating a similarly ranked team during our test to confirm the existence of the bug... Also notice that our competitors had their buddy "bork" his rank so they could play down and get matched with noob teams for the same effect. Little did they know that we had done them one better by not having to give up one of our ranks in this test of the cheat.


Thanks go to a friend who will remain anonymous. She confirmed the extistence of the bug and got the details from someone in the know. Thanks go to Shannon and Morgan for helping set up and test this exploit.

Thanks most of all to Kevin Rubyhunter and Nathaniel Mythshade who so brazenly boasted about this bug and took great delight in torturing us over the points we lost, and dared me to post about it on Central. Well, Kevin and Nathaniel... I now have a great deal of satisfaction knowing that soon you will have to earn your rank like everyone else.

See you in arena. :D
Valerian