Cheater proliferation and reporting UI
1. I ran a poll on Reddit yesterday to document the perception of cheaters in competitive duels.
https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/vue6ma/poll_have_you_lately_witnessed_cheating_in_duels/
With 235 "yes" and "no" responses, I think it's an indicative sample. It's unclear to me whether these results undershoot or overshoot the public perception of cheaters. I suspect it's probably in that range though, since newer players don't recognize cheaters as easily as experienced players (under-reporting) while others may suspect cheating where there isn't (over-reporting).
At any rate, this is very concerning for the state of competitive geoguessr play. If half your userbase sees blatant cheating going around, they may not play as much or promote the game as much.
I'll leave you to the dealing with cheating part, but if you have no clue on where to look, ask away.
2. Reporting cheaters is painful for several reasons: (1) the report button is hidden at the bottom of user profiles; (2) I have to manually paste a link to the game (why can't I just report the user and the game automatically from the game summary?); (3) I get zero in-game feedback on my ticket (has it been opened? has any action been taken? am I getting any ELO back?). (4) Banned users are not clearly displayed as such; I can only see that they are banned because they lose their competitive rank, and that's about it. (Where's the harm in adding a red x next to the name?)
I won't delve into actionable solutions, but I'd urge your team in looking at how other websites such as chess.com deal with cheaters, ELO reimbursement and notifying users who report cheating. Using the notification bar to provide updates such as this would be a huge step in rekindling the trust that your community puts in you.
Cheers!
https://www.reddit.com/r/geoguessr/comments/vue6ma/poll_have_you_lately_witnessed_cheating_in_duels/
With 235 "yes" and "no" responses, I think it's an indicative sample. It's unclear to me whether these results undershoot or overshoot the public perception of cheaters. I suspect it's probably in that range though, since newer players don't recognize cheaters as easily as experienced players (under-reporting) while others may suspect cheating where there isn't (over-reporting).
At any rate, this is very concerning for the state of competitive geoguessr play. If half your userbase sees blatant cheating going around, they may not play as much or promote the game as much.
I'll leave you to the dealing with cheating part, but if you have no clue on where to look, ask away.
2. Reporting cheaters is painful for several reasons: (1) the report button is hidden at the bottom of user profiles; (2) I have to manually paste a link to the game (why can't I just report the user and the game automatically from the game summary?); (3) I get zero in-game feedback on my ticket (has it been opened? has any action been taken? am I getting any ELO back?). (4) Banned users are not clearly displayed as such; I can only see that they are banned because they lose their competitive rank, and that's about it. (Where's the harm in adding a red x next to the name?)
I won't delve into actionable solutions, but I'd urge your team in looking at how other websites such as chess.com deal with cheaters, ELO reimbursement and notifying users who report cheating. Using the notification bar to provide updates such as this would be a huge step in rekindling the trust that your community puts in you.
Cheers!
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ELO reimbursement is something we would need to fix eventually as well, but nothing we have sorted as of now.