The story of a spoofer that single handedly fucks up a 250k ppl city himself
This is actually more of a cry for help instead of an actual story, plus its a demonstration of how much damage Niantics lax spoofer policy causes.
So first of all we have that one guy, that not only spoofs openly but in fact is being a dick to ppl by shaving team mates and shittalking fair players. He actually does that already since the old gym system still existed, also used bubblestrat in combo with multiaccounts and teamspeak to coordinate attacks with his spoofer mates back then. Not sure about now, gyms are too easy to take down anyway.
As you can all imagine, he was the most hated player in the whole city and known by even semi active trainers. When raids came up and he showed up to them, as he didnt get the code, because ppl always did private groups, he received a lot of hate. No beat ups, but he was heavily criticised, sometimes reviled (like he offended a gay dude and called him faggot and shit, so ppl in return answered with some not so kind words) and locked out from raids.
In his eyes now he is the victim and as a "revenge", he now coordinates raids in my city in spoofing groups.
That itself doesnt matter much, but those raids happen on the most popular ex raid gyms here.
Just today there have been three full groups of spoofer just at that one ex raid gym. It will most likely get triggered and take Mewtwo spots from legit players.
Its a fucking joke and probably its a question of time, when like two ppl are the only ones, that show up and the other 18 invited are spoofers.
Sry for the novel, but the situation is shit and there is not much we can do as legit players in my city.
Any ideas to handle the situation better than just accepting it?
Answers
It's less about Niantic's lax policy on spoofers and more about their complete inability to identify spoofers from a technological point of view. And lack of manpower to manually identify them.
You can try mass reporting the person in question, especially with screencaps of them using offensive language. Enough people reporting a single individual who's breaking many different rules may even get Niantic's attention from the endless ocean of reports.
Wow what's with all the downvotes? It's a fact that Niantic can currently not identify spoofers.
There is no gitting gud, there is only RNG. And spoofers who don't need to git gud because they can raid anywhere whenever it's convenient for them to do so.
The invites are hard capped in some way. If the spoofers didn't get those invites, some real players would get them instead. The spoofers may of course also be crucial to triggering the EX raid in the first place, so it's hard to draw the line where spoofers are harmful to the experience of real players' EX raiding.
I don't see the problem. You wouldn't let him raid and now he raids with spoofers. Honestly, he is the victim. He's the victim of self-righteous, so-called purists, that shut him out. I don't see how him raiding with spoofers even affects you or anyone else.
Furthermore, Niantic just shadowbanned all spoofers and users of third party apps. Yep, even the "legit players" who use third party apps got shadowbanned.
Cry harder.
Hahahahaha. I cant take that reply serious, in all honesty. Would be nice to see your reactions when your 10 gyms get grounded within two hours by 4 spoofer with team speak. But maybe you didnt witness the old system.
Your information is wrong btw, there are many ppl that use tools, that cant be detected or punished by Niantic. Not to mention those shadow bans were not permanent. That dude had 2 shadow bans already, doenst stop him from playing.
Reading is apparently your weakness. I justified, why we didnt let him raid and in my eyes thats a fair reason.
Its not the gym turnover that annoys me the most. Its making spoofer steal mewtwo passes from legit players.
Get good, loool, youre arrogance makes me angry. But Ill leave it for good now, you seem to stubborn to see the obvious arguments.
From what I've heard, they did not shadowban "all spoofers", only ones that spoofed during parts of the Mew research quest (as well as some legit players through their mistakes).
I have buddies that are still getting away with spoofing even today because they know how to stay low-pro. I happen to think that it's a large problem that spoofers have access to the same limited access of gyms and ex-invites that legit players do, because they can access them more easily, at any time (including "unsafe hours", and with ill-gotten Pokemon that puts them at an advantage). If you don't see how any of that "affects" non-spoofing players then you are lucky enough to live in a low-activity community and hail to you.
You are under the impression that there are a finite number of EX passes. I've been at raids where 3 full raid groups passed through an EX raid before I did mine with 10 people. So?
Also, you can't raid at "Unsafe Hours". Or, is before dark an unsafe hour?
So, no, I don't see how any of that affects legits. Sorry? Are there any more arguments?
Also, I live in a city of 500,000. Not so much low-activity.
There are 3 simple ways ex pass can be distributed and 2/3 are affected by Spoofers:
1. There is a hard cap on the number of invites, obviously in this scenario Spoofers can take legit players spot.
2. The number of invites are determined as a percentage of the number of eligible accounts. In this case Spoofers can also take legit players spot.
3. Each eligible account is assigned a probability based on parameters such as gym badge, number of raids etc.. but not based on the number of eligible accounts. In this case Spoofers can't take legit players spot since the probability is independent.
We don't know which of the options is correct and perhaps none. My guess would be number 2, this explain ex raids with large number of invites in popular gyms.
Number 3 has the problem of possibly having too few invites to complete the raid and this is bad press for niantic.
They do not know for sure who's spoofing. GPS drift from legit players creates a ton of false positives in any system designed to spot spoofing activity and Niantic doesn't (at least yet) have an AI that can do any kind of smarter recognition. And even then, one could just spoof in a way that emulates a legit player and be completely undetectable. Spoofing isn't going away anytime soon.
This is different from hacked API users and bots, which they could always spot with 100% accuracy from the first login.
Since we have almost the same situation in our town I would advise you to do the following.
You can't change his approach if first you don't change yours.
The main issue that spoofers have towards other players is how they use scanners,maps,share accounts,have multiple accs,etc.. but yet they call themselves legit. Those terms are all interpreted different ways and are often missused.
Since you already know the identity of that person I would advise you to do the following:
-> call him out for a drink
-> give him a chance to play with you if he is under the gym
-> do not put any ultimatums like "if you stop this or that"
-> each time he comes to play with you under the gym ( even if he still spoofs while at home) is your small victory!
-> as time passes you will look at each other as people and not spoofer/non spoofer and he will have no more interest in taking down gyms from you.
Only way to fix the issue is to talk to a person, if there is only one person responsible for all that it shouldn't be too hard.
Nice idea, but doesnt work out. He actually provoces ppl constantly by sending pics of 100% shiny or regionals or something like that, even sends those to youtuber to get attention. Brags with his won battles and km walked (lmaoo) and shittalks ppl for having worse mons. You really dont wanna play with that guy. I knew him before he started to spoof, he was and still is a dick in general.
There were many situations when we talked to him in a friendly manner, but we got nothing but disrespect and arrogance back. Way before there have been raids actually. We tried it your way, but he just continued spoofing and being an asshole.
The situation is pretty hopeless in fact, as this guy apparently has some problems with his ego.
He now only spoofs for fun and to trigger people, what actually works...
Ignoring it is not a solution either in my eyes.
I'll be honest here. It sounds like he has a personality disorder and there is nothing you can do. You can, however, focus on raiding with your legit buddies and organize nights to take him out all the gyms and drain his resources. This will, however, take commitment from many of you legits.
Also, you could start spoofing and get the resources to battle him yourself. The choice is yours.
I'll be honest, though, people with personality disorders have an endless amount of energy for wars like this. The best way to fight them is not to fight them at all.
Lastly, you will run into people like this in life. The best course of action is to learn how to deal with it now. I really don't even think if you got him banned that it would affect him. As I said, endless energy for petty wars. He will just buy/level another. 8(
Ignoring might not seem like the best option but it actually is if you already tried to get along.
Your response (no matter the context) is what's fueling him to do such things. If you drop all the communication with him, he will get bored of it since he can't hear you cry about the damage that he's inflicting.
Don't forget that even if spoofers are helping him kick you out of the gym they're not doing it cause they're in a war with you, they're just doing him a favour and they will get bored of it if there is no communication.
Scanners are down and all spoofers are bored at the moment so you're actually helping him stay in the game.
The people he has helping him feed his narcissistic supply and are his flying monkeys. Google those 2 terms and you will understand him better. They have endless energy for petty wars. I know from experience with the spoofer in the last city I resided. I was the legit like you who lead the raid team. I purposely made spoofers waste passes by having the raid team enter the lobby, without password, then we would leave after they enter and start a private with password to make them waste raid passes. This went on for months until I started to feel bad for the collateral damage. There were other spoofers who were disabled children and poor people who didn't have the means to attend raids. So, I began to let them into raids. Even after I accepted spoofers into raids, he would not drop the feud and kept trying to start beef and to try and control and exclude others. It's just not worth fighting them. They cannot be reasoned with and they will not stop.
I also started a report group on facebook. We were a group of people who spam reported confirmed spoofers several times a day for months. They were never banned. Niantic didn't care. It was very disheartening.
Things definitely got almost fractious in here at times. It's definitely an unpleasant situation to be in, and I have firsthand experience of living in a neighbourhood long affected by spoofing. Fortunately, the individuals in question seem to have been affected by Niantic's most recent disciplinary measures. One of them has returned with a L10 account, armed with an avatar name that closely mirrors his old one.
Sending in multiple tickets to Niantic aside, the best option is to slug through it. Much like life, some of the stuff that goes on in Pokemon Go is annoying to deal with, but deal with it you must. Nothing is ever a permanent state of affairs and things will look up eventually. The game can still be enjoyed, and Mewtwo will come back again and again. Don't let one (group of) psycho(s) ruin the experience for you.
I personally really care less about spoofers. Its been said, go private. As simple as that. U can go private in all raid teirs. They aint taking mon away from anyone. Niantic still makes money off them playing bottom line. Let the spoofers spoof together and us legits, just go private and get the spoofs banned from your local discord.
