Cheating Hacks Exploits and Tanking

I left War Robots several months ago because I could not stand the cheating I was seeing.  On top of that, the issues with pay to play, overpowered weapons and dashbots, match making, leagues, etc. made the game more stressful than fun so I bailed.  I returned to check in on things to find that there have been changes, but nearly enough to correct the failures.  So here is my rant on leagues and match making again, new for 2018.

Cheating is unfair behavior or playing.  Hacking is when someone modifies the game pieces to be better than as provided by the developer.  I have only seen this 2 or 3 times where a robot or weapon does not behave the way it is supposed to.  While I marvel at the effort and talent it takes, it's still cheating and should result in a player account being banned.

Exploits are using some quirk of the game to gain an advantage over other players.  Most people think of using exploits as just being creative and resourceful, but I have it from Pixonic that they consider this cheating.  Essentially an exploiting player side steps the basic gameplay intended by the developers in order to gain an advantage for personal benefit.


Tanking is considered to be an exploit and is a tool used by cheaters (Pixonic's definition) to participate in battles that give them an unfair advantage over other players.  We have all seen Tanking being performed (assuming you are paying attention) and know the results.

Tanking itself results in a player rating far below the capabilities of the hangar.  This makes enemies hard to kill, games difficult to win and rewards, which are based on generating damage points, very challenging to earn.  We have all seen this before.  In fact I see evidence of it in EVERY game I play at Diamond 2 league level.  EVERY one.  Two examples are full hangars with very high level weapons one expects in Champion league, playing down several leagues below.  Or, a single very high level robot and with weapons far beyond the players league rating.  Alternatively, there are lower level robots with very high level weapons mounted.  My personal favorite is a hangar full of dashbots mounting mk 2 weapons rated as Diamond.

The process of tanking is easy to spot as well.  Typical is players dropping out of a battle after half a minute or so.  It's always upsetting to see that your team has shrunk to 3 players in about 3 minutes of play.  Next would be players just standing around out of battle.  Third is my favorite, where players cycle through their hangars to replace their robots in Deathmatch.  The Deathmatch game has become the ultimate enabler for Tanking.

So why is this thread here under Leagues?  That is because the League system created this monster.  As long as Pixonic stays with Leagues for match making, this will continue to be a problem with the game.  Their fix is to allow players to report other players suspected of tanking, which they claim to investigate.  Their response is to quarantine offending players in a penalty box called the Tanker's League.

There is a better fix.  I have called for a rating system in match making that is based on a hangar's power, not the player's average trophy count.  Trophy count is based on a player's activity, which obviously can be manipulated.  Weapons ratings are just that.  They are unbiased.  I propose two screens: one for the sum of all the weapons mounted and one for the levels.  In the first screen, a hangar gets rated for it's combined damage capability.  A player gets matched with players of similar capability regardless of their league rating.  This way, Champion players can be in Diamond battles for fun and not be accused of seal clubbing because their hangars are no more powerful than everyone else's.  An alternative would be to have the game AI downgrade a weapon's capabilities temporarily for the game level being played.  That way a Level 12 weapon cannot do more damage than, say, a Level 9 weapon if in a Diamond league battle.  This is how on-line MMORPG's even things out. 

Secondly, a player's hangar should be rated based on the maximum weapon or robot rating in the hangar.  This insures that someone running a single Level 12 robot with Mk2 Level 12 weapons is only going to see players with Level 12 Mk2 weapons.  This would also promote players upgrading their robots and equipment at the same pace.  There would be no incentive to having very high level equipment in a hangar with lower stuff because they would be matched with players who may have entire hangars with higher level items.

If Pixonic is committed to the League system, then add these changes to discourage cheating and exploits to make sure it works.  I would add that once a player hits a certain League, all the restrictions come off, be it Master or Champion league.  The problems I see are not at the upper tiers, it's in Diamond and Expert.  You don't see it as much in Gold, but I do run across a few Gold level players who are obvious tankers running massively overpowered hangars.

Lastly, I will tell you that I report EVERY tanker, or suspected Tanker I come across regardless of the team he's on.  I send a screenshot and explanation to Pixonic tech support of why I think the player is a cheat.  We should all do the same because that is the only way this mess gets cleaned up.  This way we all have more fun, we still upgrade our robots and equipment, we still buy gold and keys while combating the pay-to-win culture that seems to dominate this game.