*_!_* :
Hi, Mr Talbot and Mr Longthorn.
For whatever reasons only you both know personally, your respective, singularly hell-bent crusade to exonerate or expose cheats in this game is bordering on the thin line of absurdity. Nonetheless, your views are respected, and let it be known whatever I expressed in my posts are NOT the same views shared by my guild mates.
Is there cheating in this game? Yes, in ways you might not be aware of: During my exchanges with Support since I started playing this game at the end of 2015, I was told one personnel in their Iranian office was fired as they discovered he was rigging the game in favour of certain Iranian teams (NOT ALL!!!!!). There were other Iranian teams banned from their accounts just because they refused to join up with the one of the 3 main "dirty" guilds. No, no names or dates or details will be provided, Mr Talbot, as I need not justify my findings to anyone, and neither should you. Oh, and you too, Mr Longthorn! My sincere apologies as no arrogance or condescension intended as I respect the rights of free speech, mine included.
The endless supply of money in the banks; gold balls and recruiter coins for certain teams, and being placed in a league filled with just 3 to 4 top level teams and 6 to 7 other inactive teams, etc, are just some of the dirty tricks employed by SOME (NOT ALL!!!!) teams, courtesy of a very corrupted and dirty sub-human named Baziline, and others in the Iranian office of SN. Ok, maybe even those working in the SN Office in Bordeaux, albeit, their registered address is in Andorra to avoid paying the correct corporate taxes, I suspect.
Besides, ALMOST every online game has some level of cheating by players.
So, Mr Talbot, please do not indulge in naivety and expect us all to believe there is no cheating in this game. Similarly, do not proclaim that every Iranian team cheats, Mr Longthorn as this shows hints of a negative pre-conceived attitude towards every Iranian. There are also good decent players, like the player formerly known as ATA and some of his guild mates; some Farsi-named teams in Friendship Army and some from Iranian Champions.
Mr Talbot has a point: We should all be playing friendlies against these big teams, or even teams in our respective guilds, and that's the spirit we should possess. That said, I also pick formation ideas from lower ranked teams in training matches as some of them have fresh ideas and really good formations. No copy and paste clones from these relatively new players as they have not been "corrupted" by the same tactics everyone copied from everyone else! LOL.
Okay, how do we actually define cheating? Is the use of stupid tactics (self-passing or lumping of long balls and sideway football) considered cheating? For me, I will say NO, but then I will consider it an act of disgraceful cowardice, and actually feel sorry for the level of desperation these teams felt as they had to use such formations to gain victories, etc.
Likewise, playing several friendlies before a league; cup and guild challenge match is not cheating but for me (just my humble views) is a public display of the lack of testes to play this game like proper men and women. Yes, females play this game as well, so, no sexism, please.
Or is clever use of settings and formations which are better than ours considered cheating? Personally, just my view, it is not unless it does not resemble football and look more like a ping-pong match.
Can we not be like teams from American Outlaws, who are focusing on their game and trying to attain high positions in the ranking game, instead of over-indulging in sometimes trivial chats here in Forum? I admire and respect teams like that for their collective drive and determination. Keep it up, Outlaws.
Anyway, the salient points of John's initial post has been lost in your respective quest to debate whether there is cheating in this game or not. Let's not get lost and distracted in your personal crusade, Ash and Jack, and thank you for hearing me out.
Have a smashing weekend, lads.
Wise words, well spoken !
Tired of reading "Mr. Jack - The decency crusader" posts, just to throw a bit more wood to the fire, sometime ago, i remember watching an arab spoken video, of someone using some sort of "decompiled & modded" version of the engine, teaching a technique to members of his guild, on how to secretly boost performance of the team.
IMHO, one could define "cheating" as something not replicable by any other player using the standard tools provided by the engine.