The Dustbin

[stockwellpete]

Hi guys,

we are aware of the issue. Dkalenda had been detected as suspicious behaviour and was contacted by the team and received an official ban warning. He explained he had a problem with his internet connection and we explained that did not matter and any further discrepancies would result in a ban. After this his download rate returned to normal.

When your system flags up a player for extra re-loads does the person reading the report know how many re-loads are involved, or is that something that they have to delve into? It seems likely to me that the person dealing with dkalenda this time did not realise the extent of the problem otherwise they would not have allowed them to continue. And wouldn't someone's download rate returning to normal after a warning confirm that they had, in fact, been abusing the system? Or is it Slitherine policy to give everyone a second chance regardless of the level of wrongdoing that has occurred?

However separately in messages to the league organizer he admitted he was cheating, though didn't accept there was anything wrong with cheating. As a result he has been permanently banned.

No, it was in a message to a player in the tournament who then forwarded it (it was just one message) on to me.

We are looking at tightening up the rules for multiplayer, but its a fine line between preventing cheating and penalizing genuine players, which is why we've always taken a manual moderation approach to this rather than allowing the system to impose automatic penalties, but we are going to look at the options we have available. It may be time to enforce more automated penalties to prevent something like this happening again.

It is not a fine line between players playing the game honestly and a player re-loading 99 and 225 times in tournament matches. And it is highly probable that similar things have been happening over the last 18 months or so. I am glad to hear that you have a number of options to consider because something seriously needs to be done now to restore the integrity of your PBEM system in the eyes of players entering the FOG2DL.

[stockwellpete]

I am not sure automated 'penalties' are required but transparency probably is - such as the proposal of including when your opponent re-downloads a turn in the turn summary or notification email. I became interested in this thread/topic after an opponent, who suffered a streak of bad luck, started indirectly accusing me of cheating in a recent tournament game. As a new player, I didn't even know that was possible. Now, he has moved that to a formal accusation. I can't prove a negative, but encouraged him in his efforts to get an answer that he can live with by contacting your team. I have only ever once had to re-download a turn, in my you-tubed televised massive defeat against Ludendorf in which I failed to kill a single unit. Given recent events, it is hard for me to take his accusation personally, as it is indeed apparently possible to cheat this way. Being an online activity, opponents have no way to judge my character...... unfortunately, as it stands now, I have no way of defending my character either. Needless to say this has dramatically impacted his and my enjoyment of the game. Thank you for all your efforts.

Is this in a FOG2DL game? If so, please send me a PM with the player's name and I will caution him as to his future conduct in our tournament. The first sentence of Rule 6 says, "Please treat organisers and other players in the way that you would wish to be treated yourself."

Edit: Thunderbird has confirmed that this is not a FOG2DL game.

[stockwellpete]

Biblical A-D Tables.jpg (701.97 KiB) Viewed 1926 times

[MikeMarchant]

I fear we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If there's an automated system for banning players, without human intervention and without an opportunity for a player to provde a defence, I am worried about how many innocent players might be penalised as a result. The consquence of this is not only that the innocent player's integity and reputation is destroyed and that his/her fun is spoiled, it also exagerrates the incidence of 'cheating', creating a false impression that there's more cheating going on than there really is. This can only further damage confidence.

Personally, I would rather let a few cheats gets away with it than risk innocent players being tarred with this unpleasant brush.

Technological solutions aside, I find the idea of self-reporting to be a pretty good fix.

If a player has to reload for some reason, they should post a notification (perhaps in a special section of the forum). In this way a public record is created without having to bother Pete or anyone else. If Slitherine then discover a player downloading an inordinate number of turns, that can be checked against this record. A mismatch would be a big red flag. It's not foolproof, but I find it hard to believe that an inveterate cheater will honestly record every reload (dear God, especially if there 225 of them!), after all, that will create suspicion without Slitherine even needing to discover the behaviour.

The only extra admin this will require will be a burden to the player having to reload, and not to anyone else.


Best Wishes

Mike

[stockwellpete]

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Biblical C-D Charts.jpg (555.41 KiB) Viewed 1773 times

[stockwellpete]

baldrick52 has won Biblical Division C after staying unbeaten for the whole season with his Kyrenean Greek army. Well played baldrick51!

[nyczar]

To be honest one of the things that I love about Pike & Shot are the melees being conducted between player turns in a random order. My dream would be that FOG2 and Pike & Shot would conduct all combat between player turns. When you launch an impact attack it doesn't resolve until all movement is finished and you end the turn. It would completely alleviate this current hot topic and make planning essential to success. I also like the idea you can't exploit openings on turns you impact which would encourage players to place a reserve to plug previous turn impact results and failed melees.

I bought Pike and Shot but couldn't get over the funny looking blocks that were the units and never invested time to play. I will have to revisit P &S in the off season to check out the game play differences...

[rs2excelsior]

Congrats! Those hoplites and chariots are tough to beat.

[nyczar]

The important question now is just one,
Did someone from Slitherine told anything about what they intend to do about that? I think that it has to be resolved by them before the new DL start..

It is under discussion. Remember that this blew up over a weekend, so they have not had much of a chance to discuss it yet. However, I can say that a number of options are under consideration.

Good, glad to hear this is being taken seriously.

[Athos1660]

To be honest one of the things that I love about Pike & Shot are the melees being conducted between player turns in a random order. My dream would be that FOG2 and Pike & Shot would conduct all combat between player turns. When you launch an impact attack it doesn't resolve until all movement is finished and you end the turn. It would completely alleviate this current hot topic and make planning essential to success. I also like the idea you can't exploit openings on turns you impact which would encourage players to place a reserve to plug previous turn impact results and failed melees.

I bought Pike and Shot but couldn't get over the funny looking blocks that were the units and never invested time to play. I will have to revisit P &S in the off season to check out the game play differences...

I appreciate it. I think the units were designed this way to look like the drawings of the period (16th and 17th centuries) depicting orders of battles, each unit showing pikemen and their pikes upright in the middle and musketeers on both sides :



I for one like the P&S units

[Ludendorf]

Well done Baldrick! I anticipate many a cunning plan to come to fruition in Division B next season!

[SnuggleBunnies]

Huzzah! Up you go, up you go!

[IainMcNeil]

The thing I worry about with reporting all download/upload issues is that they do happen in genuine fair play. Sometimes the server glitches. Sometimes your machine glitches. I've had it happen to me on numerous occasions over the years. I worry that showing these values could create false suspicion that could destroy the community, rather than building confidence in it. I also worry about accusations flying around. It is not a simple problem to solve so I don't want to make a knee jerk reaction.

[MikeC_81]

The thing I worry about with reporting all download/upload issues is that they do happen in genuine fair play. Sometimes the server glitches. Sometimes your machine glitches. I've had it happen to me on numerous occasions over the years. I worry that showing these values could create false suspicion that could destroy the community, rather than building confidence in it. I also worry about accusations flying around. It is not a simple problem to solve so I don't want to make a knee jerk reaction.

A lackluster and unacceptable response if what you have posted is to be an official statement. I have had the worst internet and GPU driver issues and I have had to reload less times than I have fingers on my hand on 2+ years this game had been out.

Quite frankly, as I and many other players have said, what you need is transparency. We can police ourselves. We don't need you to do it. But we cannot police ourselves when there is no data.

We need to, as players, the download notification that you guys receive and it needs to be appended in the automated email you send out for notifying players or it needs to be displayed in the game chat.

When someone abuses your system to the tune of 225 reloads in a game, it is super obvious that whatever you have doesn't work. People don't just go up to that absurd number, they work up to it as they realize there are no penalties. Fix this this problem. It is your highest priority for this game.

[IainMcNeil]

I understand your frustration but any change has to be thought through. This is not a simple thing to resolve without causing as much damage as good so we need to evaluate the options here and make sure we get it right. This was a perfect storm of support staff being on holiday so the team being undermanned and not monitoring the system as closely as they should and letting someone get away with something they clearly shouldn't. Previous cheating has already been dealt with and users involved banned. I'm not saying we wont make any changes but we're going to look at the data across all games and work out how we can better detect cheating from normal behaviour, not a knee jerk reaction.

[stockwellpete]

How about making it so a dodgy player's soldiers start dying as they are doing their re-loaded turn? They start by clutching their stomachs and groaning and then they all drop dead. It would be a fitting end, I feel.

[DanZanzibar]

Nice job Richard! If you care to share some wisdom in the main forum thread entitled “Tips from DL Division Winners”, it would be great to see what you write.

[Nosy_Rat]

Division A

Nosy_Rat (Indians) defeats Schweetness101 (Carthaginian) 64-43.

[Nosy_Rat]

Division A

Nosy_Rat - Frankish 751-887 AD with Croatian 625-849 AD allies challegnes pompeytheflatulent - German 933-1049 AD with Polish 966-1057 AD allies

[Nosy_Rat]

Division A

Nosy_Rat - Cimmerian 750-600 BC with Thracian 680-461 BC allies challenges XLegione (aka Stefano63) - Babylonian 629-539