This is weird. I have the same issue. There is a guy in my area on the Yellow team that has an army of 2000cp+ Flareons and he takes everything instantly. I have to wake up at 6 and go to work early if I want them for a second. There was never a yellow team presence in my area until about a month ago and this guy just snipes everything.
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Bot problem
A new cheater recently started in my area. I have specific gyms that I keep but they are instantly taken down by this player before I even make it back home or sometimes before I leave the area even at odd times of day.
It's strange because there are very weak gyms right across the road or very close to the contested gyms that aren't being touched. It doesn't seem to be a spoofer by how reactive it is and the odd gym selections(flareons mostly).
I don't know much about bots, do they target specific gyms repeatedly? Is there a way to combat a bot? Can they run out of potions if there is not many stops around or do they go to a pokestop rich area?
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I am really sorry, don't really know what you can do except to report them multiple times hoping someone at Niantic reviews the case.
Besides that just a funny note, I got banned (the small one that fixes just spinning pokestops or closing the game for few minutes) just because my old Nexus 5 had bad GPS connection and I teleported from one street to another just a few metres away and they don't do anything about real hackers/cheaters...
He's talking about the 'soft ban' that happens when the nearby list goes away and all Pokemon you're currently trying to catch run away....aka the thing that happens to me about....I dunno...every 5-6 min while I'm in the city.
If this led to permanent bans, I'm pretty sure I'd have been gone months ago
When it happened to me some months ago it was not just about that, my nearby was working perfectly, but all mons run away from me at first ball and could not even spin pokestops. I even email Niantic about that, I don't know if it can lead to a "permanent ban" but at first I was very scared about it.
Of course now I know that it is a "common thing" but my point is they can detect that "issue" and do something about it and they not even bother with all hackers/cheaters/spoofers/bots around ;)
This is news to me, I knew bots were capable of hatching eggs, catching Pokémon, evolving and spinning pokestops but I never knew they were capable of battling gyms and placing Pokémon in them.
This may explain why this player on the red team instantly kicks me out the gym once I clear them in a area I frequent. And this is around 2am and 3am that I'm out there driving around playing the game where most people should be sleeping. I clear out the gym and in 10 minutes they take the gym back.
This the first real issue I've had with cheating. I've dealt with spoofers but I could handle them with persistence.
It wouldn't be a huge deal, but with the cold weather my hunting has slowed to a crawl so I've just been doing the gyms scene. The gyms I keep are the ones on the way to the stores I frequent, near my house, etc. It's been a real issue the past 3 days. Of which he has went from 29 to 31. Not looking good.
It could a spoofer from other places of the world.
I've been figuring ways to counter spoofers/bots for a long time. I'm glad to share a bit.
But first, you must set your desired outcome properly. Nothing will stop a spoofer (or a normal player) to beat your gym if he's determined; so you can only hope that your gym will last longer.
That gives us the first method: using gym error to block him out for 3 minutes. It's quite simple: when the gym begins to have spark (indicates he's in), you (or your friend) put a mon with higher CP than that already in the gym being attacked.
If you're really determined to confront him, there's only one way to make sure that he will never take down your gym: Bubblestrat. You may also need your friend's help. Two training the gym is always faster than one beating the gym. And if the spoofer is not clever enough to know how to counter an active bubble gym, one training will be enough.
Aside from Bubblestrat, there's another method to actively hold your gym. We know that putting a mon in the gym will instantly add 2000 prestige. So we make use of it. Again, you need help.
Say the gym has 2 mon at 2000 prestige, yours at the top and your friend's at the bottom. You go into the gym to train, (make sure that you'll gain 1000 prestige per mon). When the mon you're training against almost faints, you wait.
Your friend stays out to monitor the prestige. When the spoofer has beaten the first mon, the prestige will go down 1000 with one mon left. That's time you finish your training - immediately the prestige will go up to 2000, and a new slot opens! Then your friend puts his mon into the gym, so the prestige goes up to 4000. This happens during the spoofer beating the second mon. When he finishes, the prestige goes back to 2000. Then it starts over again.
I've tested the first and the second. Both work. As for the third, I haven't done that. But theoretically, you can do the third one solo:
You enter the gym to train, and after the first mon is beaten, you exit. Since training is slower than prestiging, by the time you got out the attacker would have started to beat the second. Then you put your mon AT THE BOTTOM. As long as you do it before he beats the second, that should work.
Stop crying and bot too. Pokémon GO is about bot and spoof. Niantic knows it and dont stop the Fake gps anymore. If it comes to an end, the player base will drop drastically and it means no more pokecoins selling. Its just how the game is right now.
Its how i feel, I stoped to play long ago, i just log when i am really bored waiting for the day the spoofers and bots are gone (never).
Seriously? If you bot, you have some serious issues. It’s not like Call of Duty where people are playing together in a virtual world, the only way to see other players is to physically team up and take down a gym. So if you’re a spoofer or a bot are you just cheating to post your “success” on these message boards or go show your friends how great your team is that you cheated to get? Or so people nearby that click on the gym go “Oh yea, it’s that spoofer guy he’s always doing that I guess….” That is the saddest shit I have ever heard.
Yup. Used to happen to me constantly - also when I was training a friendly gym I would get sniped every single time, at all hours of the night + with no one around.
It must be getting worse and moving out to rural areas, b/c whenever I brought it up the response was always kind of apathetic - like I was making this stuff up. Now I'm seeing a lot more ppl saying stuff about it.
Unfortunately, it must be hard for Niantic to figure out who is doing this and who isn't.
Also, even when they do figure it out and ban an account, how hard is it for that person to do over again? Not like they actually invested much time/energy into it. So unfortunately the downside for them is limited
It could be a local spoofer with a personal vendetta - maybe just jealous of how well you're doing.
There's a couple of local spoofers that I've reported more than once and they seem to disappear for a week or so then come back and start again. I don't know whether:
a) Niantic aren't concerned about cheaters
b) Niantic don't have the resources to look into all reports
c) It's too hard for them to prove spoofing.
It's incredibly frustrating and if it gets worse it will be the one thing that drives me to give up on the game.
There is not a lot you can do. I have lots of bots operating in my area. It started off with one account which took over all the local gyms with ridiculous numbers of lapras and snorlax. I guess this was just a tester account as slow over the weeks more and more accounts appeared, at first it looked like a spoofer but you soon notice a pattern of times they attack gyms (I can see 7 gyms from my house), it had now got to a state of where there are multiple accounts all on different teams, all with very similar names, some random with a year which is normally the same, or stupid amounts of numbers one can only assume is meant to make reporting them harder. They will clear all the gyms these will stand a few hours slowing filling with all the usual bot accounts, and are then rinsed by the next team colour until all 3 teams have had their coins cashed. I've watched a couple of you tube videos of people setting up bot accounts and you can literally add as many as you can manage. Occasionally an account disappears wether this is by niantic or the owner has sold it on I'll never know, there are simply too many for me to keep reporting them all. It is the one thing I wish niantic would try and sort out, I wouldn't mind doing bot checks 10 times a day if we can get rid of these complete a holes that are using pogo as some twisted version of farmville as it has completely destroyed the real players gym experience, the only advantage is that if you are on the team that the bots are on then it's happy days as long as you can get your mons in and cashed out in time. Sorry to rant on but I don't get a platform to vent my frustration at how little is being done to stop this activity that is slowly turning die hards in my area away from the gym side of the game.
A bot is when you program a computer to play a game like PoGo for you, kinda like autopilot. Some people will program a bot to walk 30KM while they sleep so they can max their buddy candy. Others will walk in a circle and spin stops. Its a method used to level accounts. A spoof uses gps hacks to fake their location. Effectively playing the game without having to go to gyms or stops.
The reason why hes using Flareons is because they are easy to prestige against. Any player has usable Vapes to easily train on flareon. Its a method the spoofers use to combat players like you and me who set up gyms for take downs by handicapping them. By setting gyms up this way other team members will come build the gym to make it harder for you to battle them.
You have a long hard battle ahead of you. What Ive done in my area is I found a remote gym and hung up a sign that asks players to download Line messenger app and look me up. Im planning on gathering 15-20 players together on a chat board so we can organize teams to take down gyms and hopefully leave behind level 10 chansey gyms. Worst case senario 2-3 level 33s can take down a level 10 gym in 10-15 mins with little dodging and a handful of max potions. If we cant have the gyms we gonna make sure the spoofer cant as well. Ive gathered 6 players so far and I started a week ago.
I will warn you once you battle a spoofer be aware what the end game is. A spoofer can go to any gym you are at and take you out. The spoofer in my area took me out of 6-7 gyms in nearby cities. Prolly spent 6 hours doing so and once the gym was around level 8-9 2 days later, I just dropped off my defenders on top again. He hasnt took me out again I think he realized I was trying to make him run in circles.
