I also experienced it, i had a gym just opposite my house, and everytime i have taken one 30 lvl red team user off the gym, he was coming back there after like half an hour. When i saw the gym being battlin, no one was there. I reported that as well, but i dont think they have solved anything. He was still everywhere around my area. Thats why if somebody knows how to deal with this situation- i would be thankful too. I hate when i spend a lot of time playing pokemon go then somebody in front of the computer is there to make it shit for me...
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Advice on dealing with a cheater
Hi all,
I’ve been reading this site for a couple of months without contributing and the actions of a cheater have resulted in me asking for advice on how to deal with the situation – whilst also having a bit of a rant!
There are 4 gyms visible from where I live, which every Saturday and Sunday (and sometimes in the week) I aim to take. For the past month, there have been 2 users who would take these gyms back very quickly, whatever time of day – I figured, committed players, fair enough.
This was until last week when I witnessed all 4 gyms being taken from me by the same 2 users within a few minutes (impossible, it takes 20 minutes just to walk between all 4); and then this morning I was actually next to a gym whilst it was taken down, with, you’ve guessed it, no-one else around.
To top this off, yesterday I kicked off this player’s second account from the bottom of a gym (taking it from level 9 to level 8), and within half an hour the new bottom player’s ‘mon is removed and replaced with this user’s. The gym still had capacity, it was just quicker to remove one with a third account from another team and then to add the user’s second account. On a similar theme, today a level 4 gym, with the bottom ‘mon belonging to a level 12 player (a 400ish CP Jynx), was removed and immediately replaced with this player’s primary account, a 3300 CP Dragonite. How low is that! Just so he/she can be part of a stronger gym, they’ve ruined it a for a recent starter.
This is absolutely infuriating as its simply impossible to compete with this. You may say forget these gyms and move onto other ones, but a) the user does it to numerous gyms in the vicinity, and 2) I’m sure many of you are “protective” of the gyms that you can see from home, so it’s not that easy to just let it lie.
Now that I have a full pokedex, gym battling is the only thing really maintaining my interest, but this is completely killing it, so I’m after advice on what to do. I’ve already reported to Niantic twice, with extensive detail and I’ve spent 2 hours today going back and forth between gyms to remove this user. Within an hour of being home, all that is undone. Any other suggestions???
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Answers
I reported a player like this, using evidence like you, and either they got banned or they changed their name. I think they got banned. I got lucky, this happened after reporting them only once, but they had a Mr. Mime and a Farfetched that they were dumb enough to put in gyms for people to see.
Give Niantic their name, the gym locations, your rationale, and whatnot. Hopefully someone will start to track their movements and catch them sniping dratini in Japan.
Probably not worth your time targeting them, as they are playing a different game than you. Namely, they are cheating and you are not, so it's too hard to defeat them with you walking around and them sitting on their couch.
I think you made a point on the regional exclusives...I can't say it if it works that way for sure but I have reported many players hacking in my area, 5 that I can remember, all of them known hackers, moving very fast from gym to gym that are 10-15 minutes away by walking and even some that you can't get if you with a car. After reporting several times, giving proofs, time of they day they made their runs, screenshots, etc. Nothing, none of them was banned.
A month ago or so I found one of them, an instinct player, took gyms every morning for a week at very early times, I followed his route just to see of course that no one was actually there, but he made this mistake, he put a kangaskhan and a tauros on two close gyms (I am in Spain), I took screens and sent them with the report. I don't know if it is a coincidence but I have never seen this player again, I think he got banned.
Probably at this moment the only way for Niantic to spot those hackers is when they put a regional exclusive on gyms and they track their account and see they have move to another region in a matter of seconds/minutes.
In my neighboorhood, I suspect that the handful of players who routinely build up a couple of blue gyms to level 10 actually travel there to do so. However, I'm pretty sure they all use alternate team accounts so as to knock off the lowest pokemon in a gym if it happens to be level 10 when they do their rounds.
I doubt that with all the more egregious gps spoofing apparently going on, that niantic has the time to deal with everyone using a second account in this way. Has anyone heard of anyone being banned for misusing a second account?
(Mis) use of the second and third account was my secondary concern here, it was more the how to compete with / what to do with the gps spoofing.
And yes I do agree that there are bigger concerns for niantic, but I highlight this as it's close to turning me away from the game; a game that I've spent over £100 playing. The expense I don't mind as it's been worth it for the activity alone, but how many other paying customers have quit the game because of cheats?? This is why I'd have thought it's in niantic's interest to take this seriously. With the income they're generating, surely they can dedicate a sufficient amount of resource to respond to issues such as this.
Like you, gym battling is the only thing that maintains my interest. Sadly half of my town's gyms ar held by spoofers. It is very frustrating, and I have about quit playing because of it. There is a thread discussing it on the Silphroad reddit. The view there is that Niantic isn't banning spoofers at all. I agree with that, as I have reported cheaters several times over many months and they are still playing.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/5pge01/what_does_reporting_spoofers_actually_do_is_there/
The only thing that might work is putting pressure on Niantic social media platforms. if enough people complain load enough eventually they'll have to do something, I hope...
Gather the evidence and report them to Niantic. They don't ban every single report but they have banned players in the past. I guess they need enough evidence (and they need to be able to verify it) to make sure that players are actually cheating before banning them.
Another alternative is to call out the players / user names on reddit or any other message boards for your city (if there is one). Public shaming may not stop them but hopefully other players will jump in on the requests to Niantic to ban them.
If this/these cheaters are so responsive I would trick them. Install a screen recorder (e.g. Az screen recorder or similar), then take the gyms and wait for them to steal them ready to record. Swap between Pokemon app and your normal phone camera to show clearly that nobody is around and send this definitive proof to Niantic.
There's nothing else you can do really.
I am in the same situation, I have reported the spoofers in my area. I am waiting and hoping that they get banned soon
Fast forward 3 months and you are me lol. Since the prestige changed back to 1000 I pretty much gave up fighting my local spoofer. I feel like legit players must spend almost twice as much time as spoofers and to me thats not an acceptable trade. In addition to the time if you factor mileage and gas the cost is too high.
Plus fighting alot essentially pays the least rewards as well. No candy or mons and only a fraction of the XP vs farming nests. In the long run somebody who gym battles will be weaker then somebody who instead catches mons and battles less assuming both collect on 10 gyms a day.
So I found spoofers in near by cities and drop off my mons at long lasting gyms. I scout gyms and find a place to have dinner and me and my GF drop off when we need to. My GF is red and Im blue so we help each other get on level 10 gyms.
Currently Im trying to focus on strengthening my account hunting by car for Snorlax/Dratini/Chancey candies and am tanking resources for double candy and XP events.
After spending hours a day for 3 months I must say this last month has been really good. It took me a week to let go and I still get pretty bent seeing gyms from my home not have me in them. Im a fighter, its why I play MMO's cuz Im a hardcore battler, like many on this site but spoofers play a different game bro. They cant beat you theyr cheating so dont trip on it too much I feel your pain.
I play this game cuz it gets me and my GF out walking and it still does. We cant play the game as its intended which really sucks. My local spoofer wont even let me hold a local gym for a minute, thats how much he hates me. The 500 max prestige time was a good time to fight spoofers. My suspicion is that Niantic cant stop the spoofing for whatever reason. Niantic knows this is the most toxic aspect of the game but it appears they are powerless to stop it. Im gonna wait for Gen 2 and see what updates Niantic has for us. If the game isnt significantly improved by summer I'll prolly switch to something else.
You are very right that spoofers play a different game.
The game has been good as it has brought me out. However, I dislike playing on an uneven playing field and accordingly focus on collecting mons and improving my team rather than spending time and get frustrated at gyms, with the faint hope that the spoofing issue will be resolved one way or another.
If I walk into a gym where I can easily get a slot and a quick coin I'll go for it. Else, I keep on walking.
