Map Cheat/Exploit

[asdf]

A number of maps have been added to the map vault for the purpose of allowing people to play unraked matches, while gaining rank nonetheless.

The majority of them have "Voodoo" in the title (I blame Voodoo for this, those germans are always causing trouble ;) and the most commonly played are variations on Battle of Thermopylae.

You will even often see people who host these maps naming their lobby things like "noobs only, no air, Ranked".

I have many times been kicked from these lobbies merely for asking that air be disabled, if the map disabled it, or requesting that nukes and t3 arty be disabled, if the map disables it. Many hosts have even admitted the reason for refusing to disable air/naval/etc when the map disables it, is that they want a ranked match, or they need the rank too badly to disable it.

The rating system is already inaccurate and unreliable enough, except when the vast majority of someone's rank is gained through matchmaking, and even then its not terribly reliable. This just makes it a joke when people can play with air, naval, t3 arty, nukes, etc all disabled in the same match and gain matches played and incease their rating via matches that are obviously meant to be unrated, yet this mapmaking glitch/exploit permits these matches to count as ranked anyway.

A couple of the maps that seem to exploit this glitch are:

Voodoo Thermo Spezial v1
Voodoo Thermo v3

These two maps alone have had over 7000 downloads and near 5000 plays, thats a lot of added inaccuracy in an already inaccurate system that is too heavily relied on when determining who can join a lobby.

Hopefully some map pros can add to this list of maps designed to exploit this glitch.

[Prince__]

You are wrong. Voodoo the chatmoderator did NOT create those maps. It's the guy called Voodoo_Master or Prinz_falafel ( he has got osme more names ). And if everything is enabled ,just build these things or just don't join those games!!

[ColonelSheppard]

talk to a mod in the FAF lobby, they can make them unranked
also note that Voodoo maps are not made by voodoo

[FunkOff]

I would go one further and say that ANY map with a custom script should not be ranked. This includes all survival maps, all maps with arbitrary limitations, zone control, and any map with any kind of code in it that performs actions after the start of the game.... like those maps that expand after 20 minutes or however long.

[Ionic]

Yea played a few zone control and was pretty Shocked to say the least how much rating I lost, gladly so since the lower my rating the more games I can play.

[Voodoo]

asdf just have a look at the map vault.

Voodoo Thermo.JPG (67.26 KiB) Viewed 3754 times

[Nombringer]

Am I the only person who thinks it's obvious that asdf is making a joke!?

And quite a good one too, I lol'd

[asdf]

Obviously I was just messing with you Voodoo, but thank you for pointing out that the author's own description shows these maps to be designed this way.

There appear to be a total of 60 of these "Voodoo" maps in the Map Vault.

If you go by the description provided by the author, or comments left by players, all but a couple of them, if not all have been designed to exploit this glitch allowing the map to be played as a rated/ranked game when the matches are obviously supposed to be unrated/unranked.

If you add up the total number of "Plays" for all of these maps, its over 10000 matches where players have incorrectly gained or lost rank/rating, and incorrectly increased their number of matches played.

No wonder the rating system is so inaccurate. Thats likely 50000 times or more that players have incorrectly increased or decreased in rank and falsely had rated matches played attributed to them.

Considering that it is the author himself who has stated the maps are designed to exploit this glitch based on his own description, it seems obvious all of these "Voodoo" maps should be deleted from the Map Vault.

Furthermore the map "Voodoo Mountains v3b" contains comments from the author under several of his own aliases, where he is shown speaking in GERMAN thereby proving that the author is in fact Voodoo!

Voodoo must be banned!

[JeeVeS]

I would go one further and say that ANY map with a custom script should not be ranked. This includes all survival maps, all maps with arbitrary limitations, zone control, and any map with any kind of code in it that performs actions after the start of the game.... like those maps that expand after 20 minutes or however long.

This.

Voodoo must be banned!

Hmm... and this.

[Plasma_Wolf]

What I find most annoying is that all of hose maps get a high map rating in the vault while there is absolutely 0 creativity in the map and also the looks are being neglected.

I'm not necessarily calling for massive down voting on such maps, but I would like to see more votes in general, especially with all factors in mind.