MikeC_81 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 11:47 pm
Another disappointing response. Let me reiterate that "normal" behaviour is 0 reloads.
ZERO. The threshold you are setting is not for "normal" behaviour. It is the tripwire for the amount of "abnormal" behaviour at which an investigation must be launched. And no one should be afraid of investigations. I have had to reload over the course of 2+ years of competitive play due to technical problems. Yet I am more than happy to have my upload vs download ratio public because it will prove that the the wins I have gotten are legitimate by the simple fact that you can count the number of reloads due to all problems on both hands.
But you make it sound like reloads should be a regular occurance, indeed "normal" behaviour. For a reload due to internet failure, the following has to happen. Their internet must be working to download the file. Then sometime in the next 10 minutes while they play their turn, their internet has to die preventing an upload and it must stay permanently down long enough for them to have to quit the game since FoG2 allows you to retry uploads. The other possiblility is that the game constantly crashes while being played. We don't see masses of people posting on tech support forums or emails saying the game is crashing do we? I mean if there are, you better tell Pip and RBS to fix it because they aren't doing their jobs.
Mike, how do you draw the conclusion that zero reloads is normal behaviour?
You would need to analyse the date in order to conclude that. If we lived in a perfect world where internet connections were 100% reliable, where computers never crashed, where storms never interfered with electronic equipment, where players never made stupid mistakes (it's not impossible to hit Alt-F4 by accident), and nothing else could possibly go wrong while playing FoG 2, then zero reloads might be normal behaviour. But we don't live in that world.
In fact, even after Slitherine have performed this analysis and established some baseline norm, deviation from that norm only flags up abnormal behaviour. This abnormal behaviour does not, by necessity, identify cheating. It means that Slitehrine have the very difficult job of making a decision about whether to level that accusation or not, in a case where, however abnormal the data might be, the player could still be innocent. After many years of interacting with the good people at Slitherine, I do not see them wanting to be hang 'em/flog 'em judges.
This is an extremely difficult problem to solve. It is not simply a technical challenge, it is also a judicial and social challenge. Navigating through all these complexities and coming up with a solution that works, that is fair and that is acceptable to the community is not a task I would want to take on. For my part, I am happy to accept whatever solution Slitherine proposes and move on. If I have to live with the possibility that one of my opponens is cheating (and I can't see how it is possible to ever rule that possibility out) then I have the choice of either accepting that gracefully or no longer playing multiplayer against opponents I don't know and trust. Persoanlly, I will take the former course of action.
Best Wishes
Mike