Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

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3011 days, 20 hours, 15 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

First reason: Um, there is a message system that is kinda like email. Now anyone can go read all of our emails!?!? That's messed up. What if we've swapped emails, now anyone can see our personal emails, and there are some sociopaths on here who just want to send nasty messages and cause problems rather just playing the game. I do NOT want them getting my personal email address. Seriously, offering a game with a private message system and then revealing all those messages is WAY out of line.

Second reason: All of our strategies are given away now? Some people worked hard on figuring tricks out, now anyone can just waltz in and see how to do it? That can totally bite the players in the butts if they're using those strategies in other games.

Third reason: Friendly codes: Now other players can see what friendly codes we like to use. If we have some standards that we use (like to transfer stuff between alliance ships) to avoid confusion, anyone can see what those were.

I understand how it could be fun to see how some games went, but I doubt most people would volunteer to let everyone access everything they did. If you want to see who agrees, offer some games that will show everything and some games that won't, and make them both come with big warnings about it and see who picks the games that show everything.

3011 days, 19 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I agree that at least the messages should be stripped out.

Mike

3011 days, 18 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Your are damm right human.

+1 to erase the private messages.

3011 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

+1 remove messages at least

3011 days, 17 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

- I like the open idea, so don't remove the ability to see turns.

Perhaps messages between players should be hidden, I was shocked when I saw mine were visible, but I didn't communicate anything sensitive.

3011 days, 17 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

+ 1 to remove messages

3011 days, 15 hours, 48 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

+1 to remove messages.

Maybe you can implement some sort of a vote for the players in a game if they want to enable open viewing or not.
Since by analyzing the turns of a certain player one might also determine the tactics of an other player.
So if only one player objects, the game can't be looked thru at all.

3011 days, 7 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I would personally not let anybody see my turn when the game ends. I don't want anybody to know how I arrange my logistics and my offensives. My tactics are mine. If I fancy sharing them I will post them here.

Make it optional. If you wanna show off ala "look at how big is my empire", go ahead, but don't force that on me.

3011 days, 4 hours, 9 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I like it open (as it is now).

If everybody keeps his strategies secret, then players will generally not improve very much.
The game will not be very interesting then.
I find everybody can profit from analysing strategies of others and reading how the work together with their allies.

I assume all advanced players frequently read on Donovans. If Donovans would not be there, then we all would play way worse.
So IMHO it should all stay open (anyway this is nothing where you should write down your bank-account).

3011 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Just becouse there are tons of guides all over the net there is not need for anybody to know my particular tactics. Please, do not force that on me.

3011 days, 1 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I believe that messages should be removed, absolutely 100%, no reason to have them.

The ability to show your turns at the end of a game should be a player selectable option. A player should not be forced to show how they played a game. This may cause people to not want to stay on the site.

3011 days, 0 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I for one am looking forward to seeing some of the message histories in a few of my games.

Will be good so see a few stories put straight and to look at how some alliances work together. In Rebirth 3 (first game to finish), it was very impressive to see the communication method and the way they communicated as a team. I look forward to seeing that with other combos.

On the open turn side I think that for now, whilst the security is weak that it should stay open to allow people after the game to understand how their opponents suddenly got access to a dead races ships etc.

I can't see anyone being sad enough to root through the time machine (its not exactly user friendly) to gather strategies.

For now we are still in beta, and therefore everything should remain as open as possible to ensure the game develops correctly.

;-)

3010 days, 23 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

It can be interesting for other players to see how alliances coordinated (glad you found it interesting, pobs), but on the other hand, there are also private communications in there...

At the moment in-game messages are the only way to exchange email addresses and such things should not be available public. So until there is an alternative for that, I say the private messages should not be made public (but the original player should still be able to see them). Or at least have an option to choose...

3010 days, 23 hours, 27 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Go figure, the ONE person who wants to see the messages is the sociopath I was talking about. I think it proves my point. He even helps prove the point farther by admitting he doesn't care about seeing how the game was played or strategies, he just wants to read peoples personal messages! When I blocked his in game messages he used the forum to send me messages, then, when he got told to stop that, he started renaming his ships to send messages. Now he's salivating at the chance to get to read my personal messages.
Yay. My first stalker. Watch out for this guy.

3010 days, 23 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

> Go figure, the ONE person who wants to see the messages is the sociopath I was talking about.

Whew! When Rebirth 3 finished the first thing I did was looking at my enemies ships and starbases and browsing through their in-game messages.
I wasn't aware I'm a sociopath - but now that you say it ... ;-)

3010 days, 23 hours, 11 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Regarding the post game viewing unrelated to private messages:
Beta testing is about developing the game and removing bugs, not about in game strategies. When people are playing in more than one game as most of us are, we hardly want our opponents to see how we like to bunch our ships or launch attacks. Those are personal strategies, not necessarily better ways of playing the game. The point is that your opponent doesn't know how you play, so he has to prepare for different possibilities or gamble.

There's plenty of help on tactics and strategies in the forums and on Donovans. Giving total access to all a persons turns just gives away personal strategies.

3010 days, 22 hours, 55 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

and Kwesy, I meant Pobs. Didn't read yours thoroughly. It looked like you were more interested in the strategy.

and yes, I'm sure we would all LIKE to read the personal emails of anyone we want but not many people would say it's fair.

Our accounts are passworded and Joshua assured us the security is pretty good. It's not secure if you open the account up to everyone at the end. There could be legal privacy issues here too.

3010 days, 22 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

So, to somewhat sum this up:

Most people would likte to see how other players get things done and how the coordinated their efforts; wether those in the game they played, or other games. To be honest: me too.

On the other hand:

Most players don't want other player to see how the got things done and how the coordinated stuff. Me too. (altho there would be little to learn from, i guess.)

So, since the planets-team allready implemented the "Settings"-Option in the game (thanks for that, btw), i think it could be extended.
My suggestion would be to extend the Settings and implement some Options like this:

/beginning
When the game is over or you dropped out allow other players to see the following:
Actions can be viewed by:
[_] Public (anyone who has an Account can see my actions)
[_] All Players that played in this game
[_] All Players that played in this game as my Allies.
[_] Only specific Player that played in this game.
(list of players here)
        [_] Player X
        [_] Player Y
        [_] and so on...

Messages can be viewed by:
[_] Public (anyone who has an Account can see my Messages)
[_] All Players that played in this game
[_] All Players that played in this game as my Allies.
[_] Only specific Player that played in this game.
(list of players here)
        [_] Player X
        [_] Player Y
        [_] and so on...
/end

As one's messages can be seen when one is viewing the turns of the player that they were send to, i think a more elaborated setup should be used:

Actions can be viewed by:
[_] Public (anyone who has an Account can see my actions)
    [_]my Ships
    [_]my Planets
    [_]my Starbases
    [_]Stamap only
[_] All Players that played in this game
    [_]my Ships
    [_]my Planets
    [_]my Starbases
    [_]Stamap only
[_] All Players that played in this game as my Allies.
    [_]my Ships
    [_]my Planets
    [_]my Starbases
    [_]Stamap only
[_] Only specific Player that played in this game.
(list of players here)
        [_] Player X
           [_]my Ships
           [_]my Planets
           [_]my Starbases
           [_]Stamap only
        [_] Player Y
           [_]my Ships
           [_]my Planets
           [_]my Starbases
           [_]Stamap only
        [_] and so on...

Messages can be viewed by:
[_] Public (anyone who has an Account can see my Messages)
    [_]Messages send BY me.
    [_]Messages send TO me.
[_] All Players that played in this game
    [_]Messages send BY me.
    [_]Messages send TO me.
[_] All Players that played in this game as my Allies.
    [_]Messages send BY me.
    [_]Messages send TO me.
[_] Only specific Player that played in this game.
(list of players here)
        [_] Player X
           [_]Messages send BY me.
           [_]Messages send TO me.
        [_] Player Y
           [_]Messages send BY me.
           [_]Messages send TO me.
        [_] and so on...

Yes, maybe this can't be implemented because tracking it down to such a level is just to much work.
But again, this is just a suggestion.

Regards,
Shrambot

3010 days, 22 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

That takes care of most peoples concerns.

3010 days, 19 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I was being a bit candid in my last reply as I didn't want to upset anyone, but it looks like it doesn't take much to do that.

My views on the open turns.

First off, VGAP takes too long to play and too much commitment to hold back information. New players should have a chance to see what other people have learnt over the last 20 years. I don't think any of the real top players would object to this.

1) Turns should be open so that you can look back at the game you just spent 12 months of your life playing every day to see what went well and why you lost.

In other RTS games you may gain this knowledge a few times a nights, in VGAP you may have this opportunity once in year. You need to be able to look at that situation to learn and advance.

In Beta 5 I would be keen to look back at how JoeSnoffy got his economy off to such a great start. The time machine doesn't go back that far, but it was this ability and skill that won him the game, and I would love to see how he did it and learn from that. I invested 6 months of my life trying to counter what he did, and I think its better for the game community that this is visible to help all player get to a better standard.

2. Until the multiple account problems are sorted turns should be open so that you can look back to see if people have been clearly using alternative accounts.

There are loads of other threads about this, and although its difficult to do anything about this once you are in a game with the cheats, it at least allows you not to join games with people who are known to do this.

I don't need to name games, (I'm not in that many), and it comes as no surprise that the person championing the cause for hiding messages and turns is one of those "suspected" but not proven of these tactics. I for one would like those turns made available so that everyone can make their own decision on whether people play the game honestly or not. (and I guess that makes me a sociapath.....pfft).

3) This is a personal one, and biased heavily due to problems coming from point 2 above.

VGAP is about diplomacy as much as anything else, and the in game messages are the source of how that diplomacy gets started and established.

I'm aware in a number of my games of players trying to break up alliances by creating stories and telling a few white lies. Whilst this is all fair play during the game, I think that players should get the chance to see if players were honourable towards them once it was finished.

Stabbing someone in the back half way through the game is fine, both people know it happened, nothing to be ashamed of, part of the game.

However spreading accusations during the game to try to break up an alliance is not so good, and again points at the players that you would try to avoid in future games.

Again strangely the person championing the cause for hiding messages is a person who I have see doing this (my allies in the games forwarded on all messages - and again that makes me a sociapath.....pfft).

For me turns should be open at the end. Primarily it helps everyone learn and get to a better standard, which makes the game better and the community strong.

The really good player (in any game) will vary their tactics on what they see in front of them.

Open turns do allow a play to see what you did before, but VGAP has so much depth that you don't need to repeat identical tactics every time (such as playing 2 races, and running golem/MBR combos ;-)

Open turns will allow new players to learn very quickly, that should mean closer games, less drop-outs etc.

Maybe the idea for choosing to join open games and hidden games would be fine, but it may be better to do it by account. If you choose to hide your actions, why should you benefit from seeing other peoples. Personally I wouldn't be joining any hidden games as I would be dubious about what the 10 other players all have to hide.

3010 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I got nothing to hide.

I just don't want people to be able to see my way of playing and prepare their defenses accordinly.

3010 days, 18 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I understand your stance pobs. But in the original game unless you gave someone your rst's there was no way for them to see how you played a game. This version should be governed the same way, IMO. Infact, I was surprised when I saw that anyone could look at a completed game.

I understand that there's a lot of good that could be gathered out of allowing players to see your turns. But it should be an individuals choice and not a default setting. I for one have no problem with others seeing my diplomacy messages, but honestly, I don't think anyone outside of my allies in the game have any need to see my diplomacy messages.

3010 days, 17 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Interesting point of view, Pobs.
And if it comes to cheating, i absolutely back up your position.
I'm just not certain if this is the right way to solve this problem.
Because: if i were a cheater and want to use 2 accounts, i would simple send a message to my other account with the subject of establishing comunication by email and pass along an email-address. This way it would look like that there are indeed two players, that want to hide their tactics. How can you tell that this is a cheater with 2 accounts, or 2 people with 1 account ?
Of cause in this way you wont have messages in game, but a high grade of cooperation between 2 players.
You will have this in both cases: if someone is cheating via two accounts, and if 2 real people are playing with 1 account each.
So to find cheaters, this is probably not reliable enough.
Competitive games tend to make people cheat or backstab, as soon as being on top of some list (or at least not being in the bottom) becomes the most important part of the game for such people.
This btw goes for RealLife as well, so we are dealing with a problem here that is probably as old as humanity. I doubt we will find the ultimate solution. ;)

About learning:
Any newcommer that wants to learn, should, imo, try pages like the famous http://www.donovansvgap.com/ first.
There are literally hundreds of pages on tips, hints, guides and strategies available.
And if someone wants to know soemthing from someone else: ask the player !
Or start a thread in the forum. I can't remeber that a single question here wasn't answered by at least one other player.

So: i don't want to share my little secrets, a long as i plan to use them.
Any player that want's to give away their secrets can, and should, do so.

But don't force anything on players that think different.

By the way, i made up this complex... example of options for showing/hiding certain parts of the game to certain people, so that any player can decide what to share, and to whom.

Regards,
Shrambot

3010 days, 17 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Veldan said..... Infact, I was surprised when I saw that anyone could look at a completed game.

Me too, I didn't expect it either, and before it happened I don't know if I would have considered it a good or bad thing.

But now that it has happened, and given my experiences so far, AND this thread being made by the individual who did, well it just made me smile.

In response to shrambot, you're absolutely right, once people know about it its easy to cover the trail, but I think open turns at the end of a game came as a surprise to most people (was to me) and therefore i wonder if a few people might currently be a bit uneasy about having their turns exposed.

So in truth I probably don't mind either way, but I would love to have a good look at the first 15 turns of the really experienced players to help learn, and I would like to look at a number of personally related events where I didn't trust the honesty of the things that happened.

3010 days, 16 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Pobs,

1) As veldant said... that's never been an automatic option. If you want to learn, how about a simple 'Hey JoeSnoffy, awesome game... I have a question...' I bet you he will be nice if you ask.

2) That's just naive. There are soooo many possibilities to still cheat when people can see your messages and also soooo many possibilities to play normal without using internal messages for coordination between allies. By saying stuff like that you just encourage more wild accusations.

3) Hey, different people have different play and diplomacy styles. If you don't like their style, don't ally with them. Period. Just like in real life. ;)

3010 days, 16 hours, 3 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Exactly Kedalion,

I have no idea what the history/background is between pobs and HLR, but apparently pobs believes HLR is a cheat. I am not taking sides on this argument. Because I have no idea what kind of evidence exists. I think pobs wants access to all the information he can in order to definitively point out that HLR is a cheat. And since I am not taking sides, HLR is trying to defend himself from someone who he believes is harassing him and is afraid that he will get harassed because his email addy is in the in game messaging system.

I get it, if someone was ruining my game experience and I thought he was a cheat I would want to expose that vile SOB as best as I could. And if I was getting harassed by some SOB, I would want to protect myself from that person. Both guys are making valid arguments for their cases.

IMHO, I think in this case the privacy concerns trump the information access concerns. Joshua needs to handle the cheating side of the issue. And messages and turn visibility should default to closed, with players being allowed to open access in a manner similar to what shrambot outlined above.

3010 days, 13 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Player to player messages are no longer visible when viewing finished game turns.

Turns will remain open for viewing.

3010 days, 12 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Excellent, right decision.
If you often use the same friendly codes, then expect the best players to pounce on you. Researching your enemy is neither unwise nor unfair and viewing completed games is a benefit to many newer players.
The pinnacle of military deployment is the formless.

3010 days, 2 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I am glad that messages are no longer visiable.

I am somewhat dissapointed that my turns are. If someone were to ask me how I performed a specific action, I may or may not tell them, but I shouldn't be made to reveal my tactics to everyone, including opponenets in current games. However, I won't beat a dead horse

3010 days, 1 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Chaos, on one hand I agree, on the other hand I think if they go through all the trouble- it's not really convenient and easy right now- to go through all my turns, then the potential advantage is well deserved... I wouldn't be willing to spend that sort of effort. :)

3010 days, 1 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Ok, so you are forcing this on me? After having asked so many times politely and explained why you are still forcing this on me.

Thanks.

My first and last game in this site. Like if there weren't other hosting sites.

3010 days, 0 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I understand both sides arguments,
is it possible to show all turns and anonymise the player?

@kaska
but is there an other site that doesn't afford a client?
dead players are not shown ;-)

3009 days, 18 hours, 1 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Well two people have already pointed out that showing turns has nothing to do with having multiple accounts or not. All it would show is how intricate an alliance was, which you already know, since that would be the main reason for suspecting players in the first place. Kedallion, he's not naive, he just says anything to try to get his way which he won't now that messages are blocked. Did you also notice how in his first post he insults players who look at the other turns for strategy " I can't see anyone being sad enough to root through the time machine to gather strategies" then in both of his next two posts goes on to say how he wants to do just that? "I would love to have a good look at the first 15 turns of the really experienced players" Edit: and I should add that his talk of wanting to "see a few stories put straight" is garbage as he knows all his nasty crap was pre-time machine.

3009 days, 17 hours, 43 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Joshua: I think it's really wrong to reveal everyones personal hard work because you never told us ahead of time. Almost any decision in this game, you could simply make the case that if we don't like the way you setup the game we can leave, no ones forcing us to play. But this concerns what's already been played. If you insist on open viewing at the end of the game, the only fair way to do so would be do so from this point on now that people can decide fOr themselves if they want to play under those conditions (actually a weeks notice before that kicks in would be needed for true fairness). Joshua, you've pointed out before what a time investment we put into this (even pobs agrees above). Some of us put a lot of time and effort in to developing and testing tactics. I for one didn't do it for the benefit of players who were lying bullying dicks to me in game. Even if they just want to look for fun and learn nothing, it was my work so why should they get to enjoy it when they are no friends of mine?

3009 days, 17 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I think its good that mails are not shown as these are personal correspondence between people. I am also glad you have left the view option allowing newer players to learn and get a feel of 1 way to play a race

3009 days, 15 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I personally don't think we should talk about "hard work" when it comes to the games we play, I know there's a lot of time invested - I play the borg, meticulously for that matter, but we should keep in mind this is all in fun, it's a game.
Furthermore this is a very old game, there are lots of tips and tricks but frankly it's all been said and done. The leaderboard and competitive aspects specific to vga nu will yield to those who play the most games, that's the way it's set up. A few additional tips and tricks will not swing the balance in favor of the guy playing 1 game (i.e me) vs the guy playing 3+ (say figak), no disparaging intended, and it's fair that way.
So really lets not bicker about this, it's mostly irrelevant that people "steal" or "spy" on each other's strategy once a game is done. Instead let's say "look at turn 57 where I blew up 3 death stars without losing a cube!" That's the point of the viewing feature, really, bragging rights and fun.

3009 days, 12 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I don't need to brag.

New players got gigazillion tons of information in tons of sites. They don't need to see my turn to learn anything.

My tactics are mine and I don't wanna share them. If you wanna learn from me, join the list of crushed enemies, other than that, go visit Donovan's.

3009 days, 7 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

+ 1 to Dungeonmaster. Summed it all up nicely.

3009 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

He summed up nothing.

He gave an excuse to snoop into the other player's tactics and turns. A weak one.

Learning from other players does not justify this, since everybody, even him, is acknowledging the existance of tons of info and tips on the webz.

Finally, I don't know already how to explain this. It's not about sharing strategies anyway. It's about another player in my game checking my old turns to get to know my tactics and act accordingly, suiting his strategy to my particular case.

That is unfair, no matter how you want to justify it.

Anyway, as I posted already, while this does not change and it's made optional instead of FORCING this on the players, I am done with this site once my present game is over.

I ll leave the discussion here since I think my point is more than clear now.

3009 days, 5 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

First emoragequit in NU?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=emoragequit

3009 days, 1 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

If it was a ragequit I would be leaving now.

I ll finnish my present game out of respect to my allies and enemies. I just won't start a second one if I see my tactics made public for everybody to snoop once this first one is over. Nothing to do with rage but with pragmatism. I don't want to show my tactics and this site is forcing me to do so. Simple as.

Pd: answering only becouse you are obviously talking about me. Other than that, discussion over for me. I have said what I had to say.

3009 days, 0 hours, 46 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

kaska, pobs is just agreeing cause he says anything to try to get what he want. Notice how dungeonmasters post has nothing to with what pobs was arguing before? Pobs wanted personal messages and strategies, but dungeonmaster was talking about fun and calling strategies irrelevant. He's always contradicting himself and making stuff up. He starts flaming you just cause you didn't agree with his post (despite saying in a different thread how he thinks flaming should be kept out of the forums). He likes to try to taunt and bully rather than just enjoy the game, Funny that it happened in the next post just after he "agreed" it was all for fun. Wait I take that back, it's not a contradiction, that's HOW he likes to have fun.

And you're right. "bragging rights" has to be the flimsiest excuse ever. You get to enjoy killing each other as the game plays and at the end you can still look at your own turns just like how practice games "end".

3009 days, 0 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

It's a privacy and choice issue. going forward they can do what they want if they warn you. but taking away this choice regarding our past turns when they never told us this was happening breaks the trust in a world where privacy is a big issue. Giving our turns to everyone without warning or consent is going to mean no one trusts this site.

3009 days, 0 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Edit: Strange, got an error message and wondered if that posted, and it posted twice.

3009 days, 0 hours, 44 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I personally do not like the "snooping" feature - I'm not sure it will stop me from playing here, but I spend a lot of time coming up with tactics and tricks, and they tend to work best if my opponents doesn't know about them... having my turns open for review will strain my future games, so I would prefer not to have them open.

I guess the real question is why? Why are the turns open for review?

If it is to prevent cheating, then I would rather have my turns inspected by one of the admins, but if it is simple to allow others to learn from finished games, then it should be possible for players to "opt-out", prevent others from looking at their finished turns (if they are really interested in the games progress, they can look at the other players turns in the same game - but not mine).

Regards

3009 days, 0 hours, 22 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I don't want to get involved in ongoing arguments between rival players - Kaska, I can tell just by the score exactly how you play. You have 1.5 times more warships than planets at turn 50, I know precisely how you play your robots. There's a lot of data available, from KT sunk to total military score, and frankly the robots are the least subtle race in VGA. They're great fun, don't get me wrong. I'm unconvinced that seeing your turns in detail would give me a significant advantage against you that I don't already have from the broad brush-strokes of the tabulated score. I'm not saying this to diminish you as a player, you're obviously a good player.
I really don't mind if you watch all my turns in detail when I'm done, watch my turn 57, pretty exciting. It's simply fun to watch how races progressed to ultimate victory. I think you're being a little too reactive to this issue.

3009 days, 0 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Ok, all naysayers, obviously we can add a checkbox to your account settings that lets you not show your turns when the game is over, but there are three reasons for showing the game turns:

1) Read dungeon masters post. It is about fun. So we can all go have a look back at a long and fun game and just talk about it. When releasing the feature the intention was very lighthearted and I expected everyone to enjoy it.

2) Cheating: There is absolutely no technical way to stop cheating in this game and it is impossible for us to have enough administrative man-power to review every game turn by turn. There have been countless posts and arguments about cheating and will continue to be so (far more intense than this thread). By opening the turns it simply ends the problem. Everyone knows they can look into the turn at the end and if there are obvious signs of cheating can report it to the admins.

This protects both the suspicious players and the players being accused of cheating. If someone accuses you, you can say, "You are welcome to look at my turn at the end of this game.".

It seems to me that only those with something truly to hide would care about someone seeing their turns. Most strategy games allow some sort of playback feature and of course every strategy board game is visible to all and fun to discuss in the end.

I can also say with full confidence that none of the players complaining in this thread, or any other player for that matter, has any super, special, unbelievable, superior tactics that looking into their turns is going to give away for all time so that they can never win a game again. I'd absolutely love it if any players trying to improve their game carefully study one of Figak's games to try to learn his tactics. Chess players do this all the time, and so do the greatest General's when studying military history.

On the flip side, I suspect many players feel embarrassed about their turn and are worried that others will see them as a newb or inexperienced player and are nervous of the ridicule. Let that go. Report any such ridicule through the contact form. We want to create a safe, fun, enjoyable and competitive environment for us all to play and learn.

3) Lastly, in the context of the "Grand Theatre" of the war for the Echo Cluster here at Nu every public game represents the battle for a single planetary system in the Echo Cluster. The winning player has won that cluster for their race in their bid to become Emperor. I want that history recorded, and public, as we create the historical record of the war for the Echo Cluster so we can look back at the history of each Officer (player-race) and their journey through their respective careers. So we can all enjoy the moments of tactical brilliance, diplomatic failures, and grand strategic vision of the players in our community.

HLR was absolutely right to bring up the privacy issue regarding player to player messages and we have acted on that accordingly and I will happily concede the option to hide your turns in a Private game.

Public games were designed to be public. I'm sorry if I was not clear about that when you first started. I don't want there to be any question about the validity of an Emperor's win when we start giving out prizes to winners here at Nu.

3008 days, 23 hours, 12 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

OK, so the discussion has gone off topic, and that's probably my fault (again). I'll clear it up from my point of view and leave the topic alone. (I got to say this is the most sensitive online forum I have ever seen :-)

It’s no secret that I believe that humanlightnighrod and riley are the same person. I'm not the only person to complain about it, but I was the only person to openly mock HLR when he mistakenly posted a message under rileys name at the beginning of this whole flame fest. That coupled with a minor disagreement over an alliance has resulted in the bickering seen in this topic.

I've tried my best not to flame and other than naming a few ships things like "Hello Riley", or "Rileys getting assimilated" in Game 23 I have kept myself quiet. Your claims about me bullying you are bullshit, I'm blocked in the two games we are in. On the other hand you have sent me a number of insulting messages in game, and been abusive in this post at me. I don’t cry about it and they would be visible for others to see with open turns.

So why did I wind you up in this thread, well its twofold.

1) I found it amusing that the one person I believe is double accounting wants his turns secret. It may be a coincidence. You and Riley may be best buddies who live in the same house, if you are then good for you, and I'll be more than happy to publicly say on the forum that I was mistaken about you cheating. Infact, I'll say it now, that I may well be wrong and I'm really sorry if I am.

but

2) I wind you up because when I have, it has given me a strategic advantage in the games we play against each other.

In game 23 you got all excited, made a massively bad strategic error and now you have 1 ship left hidden away cloaked somewhere.

http://vgaplanets.nu/games/1833

In game 33 you ran an MBR (or maybe Riley did) from top right of the map, to bottom centre of the map, then you ran an MBR/Golem combo up to the top centre of the map to try to kill my homeworld. You failed in your attempt, and in doing so, you showed all other players in the game your "two accounts" (or maybe your close friend), and as a result everyone else has ganged up on you and now the tide has turned and you will lose game 33.

http://vgaplanets.nu/games/2297

So I admit openly that I'm guilty of a bit of meta-gaming.

I've done it in most of my games. In game 27 I've been trying it for a while, but strangely enough my opponents keep renaming their ships with even wittier names than I can come up with and they're about to kick my ass. They're not whining, infact they're having fun and I believe they will next start to co-ordinate their kills so that the VCR messages combine into amusing sentences to mock my efforts even further.

It’s a game and whether your weakness is a lack of heavy carriers, no cloakers, or a tendency towards emorage, it’s your opponent prerogative to root it out and use it against you.

And just incase you feel a great need to argue against my honest statement, consider that I may actually be meta gaming again.

And Joshua, please can you not allow this message to be made public as I would hate for other players to learn my very secretive meta-gaming tactics should others become immune to their charm or never before thought of such underhand and devious tactics.

3008 days, 23 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Nicely said Joshua, I'm happy with that simplicity.

Now a humorous note:

What's the interest on with my turns?!! huh?!!

They are not that impressive

*shurgs*

*Turns around*

*Swears at the last remaining planet and ship of the privateer in Fast start 19*

3008 days, 22 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Joshua,

It really does look like we have not been able to get the message across. Answering the main two arguments on your wall of text:

a) You have been shown how easy it is to mask playing with two accounts in the same game, regardless people beeing able or not to see the turns and even the messages. That argument has been shown as invalid on this thread already.

b) Nobody is claiming having any superior brilliant tactics that work like an "I win" button. I have repeated the same so many times that I am starting to worry about how to explain this. It's about future enemies checking my particular style of playing in past games and adjusting their tactics accordingly.

Everybody is 100% sure that you implemented this with the best intentions. But, sorry, forcing this on the players is wrong.

3008 days, 21 hours, 55 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Kaska, I think you have got your point over clearly and your arguments are sound. However not everyone agrees with them.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but it doesn't mean that you, or me or Joshua is right. Its a grey area, but its down to the site developers to do what they feel is right for them and the future of the game.

It reminded me of the following program I just saw, which I found amusing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MV1ot9HkPg

3008 days, 21 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Just some additional thoughts:
As Joshua mentioned here, showing turns was implemented to allow other player to see the actions of those, who became the Emperor of the Cluster, and to add some fun when watching other players actions.
The point of "i don't want to show you my secrets" is still valid, in my eyes.
Unless the secret is cheating, which is still very hard to find out, even with doubleaccounting being the probably only way to cheat here (at least the only thing i have heard of).
So i still would like to have the abitiliy to customize who can see my turns, and who don't.
In the end, this is not chess: not being able to see the moves of your opponent(s) is part of the game; besides, i have never heard of any cloaking Chess-pieces. ;)

To make fights for the higher ranks as open as possible, i can imagine 3 ways:
1: Games that are played for the higher ranks (inner quadrants) are always public viewable.
2: Since players who want to hide their turns usually want to achive something, the might also want to go for the Emperor-Rank, while still not giving away their secrets.
So 2 rankings might be an option:
1 Ranking for "open", and 1 for "hiding" players. The "hiding" players wont be able to win any of the prizes, Joshua spoke of, of cause. (there might be a second Emperor, tho, for the "Hiding"-Ranks)
3: All games, but the one for the Emperor, can have hidden turns. The turns will become public viewable 6 months after the game ended.

Again, this is a lot of work for the Planets-Team, in any case.
So Option 1 might offend the least players while meaning the least work for the planets-team.

I know this suggestion will still cause the very same arguments to arrise, that we just went thru.
But i'm hoping for some new arguments, maybe even some nice new insults for me to learn, so please wait with new posts until i got my Popcorn ready ! 8D

Regards,
Shrambot

3008 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

*Strange popping sounds are heared out of Shrambot's kitchen*

3008 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Ok, back and ready to listen ! :D
*munch-munch-much*

3008 days, 21 hours, 26 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Fine with me if all games are viewable when finished.

In fact, I agree it is a nice NU feature, if I ever found the time to set aside to study someone that I feel is one of the best at the race they play.

Players can cheat no matter what, but making turns viewable when finished helps some on that too, so I agree that is a nice bonus.

The ONE item mentioned that I think is valid is for a player to have a SAFE way to share their email address or text # with another player. Since turns will become viewable when finished, it would be nice if there was a way to share this info without sharing in an in-game message. In fact, on a related note, I just found out a person that I played VGAP with 15 years ago is playing NU now -- and the only way we can communicate and catch up with each other is on an open NU forum (for everyone else to read too). Would be nice if we were able to communicate more privately.

Bond

3008 days, 20 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I tend to have to agree with bondservant, emails and personal info should not be shown but making turns visible is a great idea.

Trying to work out someones tactics would be extremely difficult with the time machine especially as most good moves are developed over a number of turns and normally involve multiple ships each with its own transfers, FC's, missions, timing of movement, etc. Bearing this in mind, looking at games that you are not involved in, you would only get a general idea on how they play and would not know where to look for specific tactics.

The best part in making turns visible is when you cant work out how you got trumped by your enemy. Sometimes you can work it out over a couple of days, other times you may think it was a bug, worked it out from the forums or very occasionally you are clueless how they pulled of a series of significant events. You can then bow to your enemy, congratulate him and then make sure you never got caught like that again. This information is what makes us better players and can only be good for the Nu community along with alot of helpful threads within this forum and the great people.

If any one wishes to see my turns at the end of the game then you may be able to see a few good moves that I pulled of but make sure that you dont use some of the flukes, pure luck and almighty f*&^ups that alarmingly, I seem to regularly pull off with total competance.

An open and close knit NU community will ensure that help is allways available and the games stay fun. (Fun is why we play is it not?)

3008 days, 20 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dipping my boots into this little firestorm:

What if, rather than viewing the turns of individual players, the game would have a complete, master view.of each turn at the end. So if you wanted to see how a war panned out, or what if you colonized that planet instead, or where those cloakers were before the invasion, you could see, but it wouldn't be as if you were standing over anyone's shoulder. It would be "This game contains hidden information, but it's revealed after the game is over."

EDIT: For that matter, Joe Schmoe can already examine the warship/planet/score/etc totals even while the game is running, and that's hardly an invasion of privacy.

3008 days, 17 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Oh well, it's easier then.

I don't want to participate in any competition to be the emperor of anything. I play for fun, not for bragging rights, not to be on top of any ladder. Count me out whatever competition this emperor thing is and keep my turns closed.

3008 days, 17 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Okay, Joshua, you explained yourself. I was about to make a post this morning about military studies.

Frankly, I think the value of seeing WHAT you did in a single game doesn't present an open view into your thoughts, just your actions. It's like watching a Master Martial Artist one time time and then saying you know as much of that Martial Art the Master does. False!

If you played many games here and you were worth studying that intricately, you may have a problem with people posting something like "Kaska: A primer on his tactics and strategy, and how to execute the Borg Slice Maneuver from turn 57 of game 7666." If that happened, hell, you should be flattered that someone thought that much of your play to make that kind of a write-up on you. At worst you may be forced to alter how you approach a given situation from time to time.

I still have a problem with FORCING people to show their turns, but frankly after Joshua laid his cards on the table, I respect his stance and support it.

Thanks for clarifying your position Joshua, it makes sense.

+1

3008 days, 14 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Well Joshua, at least you are generating talk... :)

As I said, I don't like being forced to reveal my tactics, and that is what this does. Regardless of if we want to admit it, humans are creatures of habit, and that includes when we play. I would lay money that most of us have a set of general tactics and deployments that we fall back to. Default loadouts for our warships, default loads for our scouts and colonies. By making the turns from prior games visible to current opponents, it becomes much simpler for those current opponents to guess what I, or any other player who's turns they can view, what a ship of mine may be armed with or loaded with, or how my planets my be developed.

The more games completed, the easier it will be for current opponents to guess what I am going to do in any specific situation. Now, while the same information can be gathered by playing against (or with) me, that's information gathered while playing, in-universe if you will. This is more like being able to read a modern copy of Erwin Rommel's memoirs of his Africa Campaign when in 1944 when preparing for D-Day as an Allied commander. You are getting an insight to your opponent from your opponent's viewpoint.

You want to know how I did something, ask me. I'll likely tell you, with the details I feel appropriate. But forcing me to show my current and/or future opponent how I think and react to specific situations, without them having to pay the price and take the risk of entering those situations first? I'm sorry, but that's not entirely fair to the players.

On the other hand, if this is a beta-only thing, then I could understand it. It allows people to look through finished games for possible bugs that weren't caught at the time. Doesn't mean I *like* it, just that it does make some sense when viewed that way.

On the gripping hand (;)), if it was limited to only the active players at the end of the game (though I'd hope there would be a minimum # of active turns requirement), I could understand it as well, and would likely not have as much of an issue with it. Yes, it could allow current opponents to gain an insight into a player's play style, but at least in this case the players in question had already paid the price of admission and took their chances, and could very well find out most of the information in-game anyways, from first hand experience or communication with allies.

On the fourth hand (wait, 4 hands???? I have got to see a doctor about this), it just occurred to me that this could be used as a counter to one of .Nu's potential problems (remember the last major conversation thread???), player reliability. Could it be toggled to only allow players who haven't dropped from any game, for whatever reason (or if that's to strict, meeting some "reliability rating") to have access to completed game's turns? It could be viewed as an incentive... ("if you never drop a game, you can check out the history of completed games to look for that added edge.").

Ok, I'm gonna go see someone about getting these extra appendages treated before I find myself growing some extra legs... :)

3008 days, 10 hours, 28 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I second chaos1357's proposal - only being able to see completed turns in games that you have completed yourself! Your opponents are the most likely to suspect you of cheating, so the whole cheating part is also solved with this.

And it prevents the major problem, of (most of) my current opponents looking at my old games to guess my friendlycodes and typical deployments.

The friendlycode part is actually the worst thing - I assume that most of us are not 100% random when we enter a friendlycode, and for those of us that use a lot of friendly-code triggered actions, we need some "passive" friendlycode to park our ships at when we are done with the mission, otherwise we are more likely to be countered by matching friendlycodes (either ship-to-ship to avoid combat, pesky privateers, or starbase-to-cloaker, to force a surrender).

I propose a friendlycode randomizer like we had in VPA ;)

Regards

2998 days, 14 hours, 9 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

This post for Joshua only since his decision is the only one that counts.
Joshua, so you are saying you could put a box in but won't? Be clear.
most important to any business: People WILL leave the game because of this being forced on us, but no one would leave because of it being optional. The game is meant to make MONEY at some point right?

responding to your reasons:
1. That fun side of it is great with regards to friends. This thread has shown we are not all friends with the people we play against. I really DONT want some of them enjoying looking through my turns. They've been jerks in games and don't deserve it. One even claimed in this thread he just uses whatever he can (including forums) to harass people and excuses it as "meta-gaming".

and If it's so light hearted why would you insist on keeping it despite the considerable backlash.

2. Give us ANY examples of suspicious behaviour that would look different from when someone's ally joins a game just to help them. No one's given a single example yet. I'm in several games where I know people joined just to help the other player, and seeing their turns at the end won't make a bit of difference. Won't prove anything. Just give us ANY examples of what would be worth reporting. What would actually result in you taking action? Are there any rules that say we can't join an open slot and give everything to an ally of a different game? I call that cheating but it's fair game here, heck, the biggest whiner in here about "cheating" just said in a different thread he doesn't care about that cause it helps him sometimes.

and are you kidding us about "only those with something truly to hide" wouldn't want to reveal their turns? wow, then maybe you'll invite me over to your house and let me snoop through your house, unless you have something to hide. it's still a privacy issue. FYI, most of the objectors have stated that we do indeed want to hide something. Our strategies.

3. Since no one here has ever mentioned this "grand theatre" or any similar concept, I don't think anyone really cares. In point one you claimed it was "a very light-hearted feature" so obiviously you didn't care about it that much either. You mention "moments of tactical brilliance", but wait, didn't you just finish saying no one has super amazing strategies? So according to your own words there is nothing worth seeing.

The game is public to join, but our turns are not "public". They're passworded and viewable only by the player. You just claimed in point 1 that it was a light-hearted feature, so there was NOT any intent to make it public. With passwords, no one expected the complete reveal at the end. It's not that you weren't clear about it being revealed at the end, you gave NO INDICATION what so ever. Unless the feature is implemented on future turns only, it feels like stealing to some of us, even if YOU don't personally think any of our strategies are good enough to be steal. That kind of betrayal makes people not trust you, and thus far less likely to pay. Remember, people WILL leave the game because of this being forced on us, but no one would leave because of it being optional. The game is meant to make MONEY at some point right?

2998 days, 13 hours, 49 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

At the end of a game anybody can see my turns.

Right now because of when time machine was introduced you can not look at a complete game any way.

Not to go off topic but...

I believe that a player with two accounts has gone into a game that is joining. looked over all the races and picked the two next to each other that they want.

I hope that some better way of getting a game started than just this open system we have now.

People can take advantage of it now.

2998 days, 13 hours, 1 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Yes, both of those are off topic. There is a separate poll thread for whether or not people would allow their own turns to be visible at the end,

and I tried to start another thread for that issue of open slots joining here
http://vgaplanets.nu/discussion/multiple-accounts-vs-people-joining-open-slots
though it went no where after pobs joined in. Probably cause he just finished admitting that he uses the forums for "meta gaming" (aka harassing) so no one one wanted to waste their breath. But please delete the above and move it to those threads and maybe some people will actually weigh in.

The only way it might be relevant to this thread is if you think seeing the turns at the end would prove it was multiple accounts and cheating. Do you think it would PROVE it? You already suspect/know the two are playing together, would open turns at the end tell you anything useful?

2998 days, 11 hours, 15 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

HLR, I've added a flag to the account table which will hide your turns. I've set this flag on your account and Kaska's as well. Anyone else who wants this special feature please use the contact us form and include your username.

Turns which are not visible will be reviewed by an admin.

2998 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Bravo.

2998 days, 10 hours, 25 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Go look at the poll thread, there were lots of people who wouldn't choose to reveal their turns.

so you gave your points and I countered every one, and instead of responding to the rational questions, your response is basically, "ok, we're investigating you!" nice. so you're investigating me, go ahead, but i still want an answer. I want an example of what's a multiple account that is different from two allies. what constitutes cheating? are you going to start punting people for being too well coordinated? that'd be great. pitch the skilled players. if you're going to make a veiled threat to anyone who doesn't agree with your reasons for open turns (and there's more than two of us, several people have explained how open turns won't show multiple accounts, but NO ONE has explained how it's supposed to help) tell us what the actual crime is so you can't just make something up.

Technically there's no posted rules here. I could go make a second account and there's nothing anywhere that says I can't. If i run a friends turns while he's away, i'm using multiple accounts, how long before it becomes cheating? does this mean you'll start penalizing all those players who join open slots to give everything to their allies of different games? that's even more blatant than multiple accounts.

I'll open that question up to anyone now . Can anyone explain how open turns show you anything but how closely allied any two players are? If you haven't got an answer then don't answer, but just don't veer off to other points that have been covered.

2998 days, 6 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Man, just relax will ya?

Joshua has listened to us, and acted accordingly. I don't mind an admin checking my turns, I got nothing to hide (but my tactics). I don't see it as a threat but as something logical. I do understand that wanting to hide my turns may look suspicious to some players (specially new players), and Joshua's decision is actually showing us he does worry about cheating. Flagging some players so their turns won't be public once the game is over and then checking their turns means extra work for him and his team, yet he is willing to do that when simply reverting this setup back, or ignoring us, or flagging us without checking our turns would have been an easier solution.

So, the same way I am complaining hardly when I think something is wrong, I am applauding when I think things are done properly. And this time I am giving Joshua a big round of applause. Again, bravo.

You are right, technically there are no posted rules, but still we got that (not so common) common sense. Playing with 2 accounts or joining in with pre-made groups is cheating, you know it, Joshua knows it, we all know it, dont we. Same applies to taking over abandoned races with a second account in order to give ships over to your main account.

I also think you are right when you say that open turns are not as good a mechanism to spot cheaters as we'd likeit to be, but still you ll have to admit that it's better than nothing. I suggest that we all think of mechanisms to deal with the most common cheating and if we come across an idea that is worth discussing we bring it to the forums.

2998 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Well, well, well... i have nothing to contribute to your question, Humanlightningrod, as the only way of cheating here that i can imagine is Double-Accounting.

@Joshua:
I don't understand why " Accounts created after 5/27/2011 are not eligible for this feature."
If you want people to pay for your products, you should obey their wishes.
@Humanlightningrod
That being said, Joshua also has to take into account the whishes of the OTHER kind of paying customers, namly those who oppose the hiding turns.

I will, from now on, refer to those two kinds of players as "prohiders" and"contrahiders", being well aware that this is a generalisation (i personally still opt for a system of Checkboxes, see above.)

@prohiders:
If the turns would be visible, what kind of information IN YOUR TURNS would you like to have been hidden, in order to accept open turns ? Like: don't show warpfactors, FriendlyCodes, missions cargotransfers, armament, and so on.. so only things would be visible, that anyone being present at that location could see anyway... like the explosions and maybe the battles.. only that he now can see cloaked ships and ships on planets, where he doesn't had a Ship of his own.

@contrahiders:
i don't see a way of using the current game-mechanism to cheat, as there are no magical FC's or such; i actually think hiding orders and such could be a compromise.

=======================================================================

@prohiders:
You must admit that being able to join games as you like, and opening accounts as you like, enables doubleaccounting without someone else noticing it, just like on other hosting-sides.
Even IF the players have to pay for their account, they can currently change their name as they like, making backtracking difficulty.
They just change the name of one of their accounts, so noone can notice what was going on.
That, of cause, means, they will have to wait for their second account to drop out of the game, before they can change their name without someone else noticing it.

@contrahiders:
I think said above tactic can be countered easily:
Just add ID-numbers to Players, and have the game check for they Players ID where ever his name would be, then display the name stated in his profile; so even in games he has FINISHED his CURRENT name would appear.
Or you can add a feature, that will show with what other player's a player did ally so far; even "gsX"-transfers, Basetaking (leaving few clans and taking the Base by GA) and Ships surrendering could be stated here; if the numbers are very high, and/or certain players where allied very often, this can give you a hint.
Also, if the statistic shows if some players changes his names very often, this should be displayed as well (Player's alias's: *list names here* .... thats why having a unique Players-ID could be important, so you can actually SEE, what players tend to ally, and want to hide that.

It might not be a good way to find cheaters, as this might just be 2 players who wants to play together without someone else noticing it.
But if you find 2 players in your game you can check by just taking a look at their profile if they could be allied, or not (even if there was no "player X allied player Y - message), or if the new player that just joined an open race is related to another player in this game.

=======================================================================

@prohiders:
I can almost here you now:
"I want EVERYTHING to be hidden, even if i ally someone, i don't want them to know that they are in for a nasty surprise; for instance that i will backstab my current ally ("stupid Empire, thanks for the SSD, now you are toast !"). You can do that with or without Doubleaccounting. Just like in real life, you can be betrayed !"
Yes, i would want to do the same and hide my ally for as long as possible (i am talking about an ally with a real person, not doubleaccountig), to get a slight advantage. However, if i have an Ally, i don't betray them like that.
Keep in mind, that in real life, you KNOW who backstabbed you, and who betrayed you, at least when you are dealing with someone face to face, which is usually the case in, for instance, boardgames.
In real war this backstabbing-thinks can still happen, but, just to remind you: this is a game. or it should be.

Here you can just change your name and your Profile, and go on without someone else noticing you are related to another player (via Doubleacountig or just being sneaky RL-Friends).
To give a poitive example:
Edidbeduid15 states in his profile, that his RL-Friend is also playing here, thus allowing other players in the game the possibility to be better prepared.
Just by browsing his current games you could find out who that would be, he didn't even NEEDS to state that.

So it is a matter of "fair game" or "no fair game".
What do you want ?
You can't except to be treated fair if you don't treat others fair.
I am of the kind that wants to be treated fairly.
Sorry, but if you want to be treated fairly, but dont want to treat others fairly, you are just a major [insert real harsh swearword here], imho.
So would i have a constant ally, i wouldn't oppose other players realizing that, if they take a look at my profile. They would have to look for that theirself, tho, it's not like im going to shout all over the place what i am actually going to hide; but they could find it out, if they'd like to.
Of cause, in such a case they could suspect that i am doubleaccounting: that wouldn't make a difference, because, just by realizing a relationship between two players, they will KNOW that cooperation between the 2 races played by me and my ally WILL happen !
Same as with an option for my ally being able to play my turns when im absent (a feature that i would really like to see here, it's at least better then players dropping out because they are on a vacation). Of cause, if someone is playing the turn for his ally (and imho you MUST be allied to allow this feature), there should be a general message to the other players, stating "player x played for player z in this turn".

@contrahiders:
Am i mistaken, or is the issue about showing or hiding turns ... aiming towards having fair play in this game in general ?
I am absolutely with you on that matter, i think RLis unfair enough, and we play games to have fun, and not a recreation of RL... ok, "The Sims" aside, maybe... .
I don't think this can't be achieved by simply showing the turns to everyone after the game has finished.
So: I don't think any player that choose to hide his turns needs to be checked, unless another player (that was in the same game as he was) wants his turns to be checked.

=======================================================================

So, to conclude this:
In my eyes this is basically a problem of "Fair Play" vs. "Privacy".
The "FairPlayers" suspecting the "Privacy-Guys" to hide that they are cheating.
The "Privacy-Guys" are suspecting the "FairPlayers" to steal their secrets.
(I find myself stuck somewhere in the middle of this to extremes.)
And while we are bashing each others heads, the real Cheaters are laughing at us, countinuing to spoil the game and eliminating trust as a whole.

So i must backup Humanlightningrod's question about "what kind of cheating is there in this game ?"
Not to proof a point or to drag someon down, but because i really think we should focus on the problem of getting rid of cheating as good as possible.

Anything you use within a game isn't cheating. Even backstabbing or hiding your ally isn't.
Anything you use from outside of the game to get an advantage in the game is cheating. So far i can only imagine DoubleAccounting as a way to cheat here.

Lets grab the evil at its roots !
Getting the roots out will require more work, yes, as you need to digg a lot.
But you will only have to do this _once_.
If you don't do that, you need to cut off the evil above the ground.
And that has to be done _constantly_.

Regards,
Shrambot

P.S.: Sorry Joshua for totally ignoring your point of the "Grand Theatre", as i think the "Privacy vs Cheating"-issue is currently more important. I still like the idea of a "Grand Theatre", but a better way for presenting this should be used. The current way isn't as userfriendly as it should be, anyway. (I would contribute my ideas about that if there is a theead regarding this.)

2997 days, 18 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Well, one easy thing to do is what we all did when hosting games.

You first get the players for the game and THEN you compile turn 1. This way nobody can just check the position of the available races in space and then choose one.

I think I ll post something about this on a new thread.

2997 days, 14 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Well if kaska and hlr turns are hidden then they should not be able to see other peoples turns.

2997 days, 12 hours, 43 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

That does seem fair. It will be so.

2997 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I am cool with that, and it makes plenty of sense.

2997 days, 2 hours, 17 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

That's an insufficient penalty - there's nothing to prevent the "secretive" players from starting a new account and simply looking at everyone's turns from there, so win-win. Please throw them off the leaderboard.
If they want to avoid any and all scrutiny they shouldn't be allowed to play with the best players in games that count. That's likewise fair. Keep their scores and statistics, just don't rank them.
I still affirm this is childish, insecure and bizarre to be playing more than one account in one game.
I want a clean fight at the high levels and I'm sure I'm not alone. You can still play your games, keep your moves hidden, but you get no credentials for it.
The leaderboard is intended to be competitive and should be open.

2997 days, 1 hours, 34 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Heh, I have already stated that I don't play for rankings. I play for fun. I already said exactly that. Count me out of the rankings and keep my turns hidden, I am happy with that.

Anyway, the way rankings work atm, they have little do with player skill but with the amount of games open and turns delivered.

Finally... what the hell have the "competitive" and the "open" concepts have to do with each other?

Oh, and by the way, Joshua already stated that our turns are going to be checked by an admin. At this precise moment, cheating is way easier for you than for me.

Edit: Actually, know what... I ll go further than you. Don't even keep my scores and statistics, I don't want my future enemies to know whether I am a skilled player or not. Hell, yeah, no scoring, no statistics, no information of any kind whatsoever about me. If that makes you happy you can even delete my name from the scoring table, and you don't even need to wait for the game to finish.

2997 days, 0 hours, 58 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

and I quote dungeonmaster "The leaderboard and competitive aspects specific to vga nu will yield to those who play the most games, that's the way it's set up." so you've already said competition and rankings have nothing to do with it.

and your other posts said it was purely about fun, and that it wasn't any help to see turns when done because you're good enough to see what you need without help. Sounds like you're pretty upset about it for someone who claimed it was "purely for fun". If you're now saying it has competitive elements, then you're admitting there is some kind of advantage to seeing turns.

Of course it sounds like you are also saying a person is multiple accounting if they hide their accounts. So I'll ask you what the heck you want to see so badly? No one has answered how open turns does anything to prevent cheating or multiple accounts. It just shows strategies and alliances, several people have explained how it won't show you anything but alliances which are fair game. There has been no counter argument to that, instead anyone who wants open turns just accuses the people who hide their turns of cheating. THAT'S the only thing childish and immature here.

2997 days, 0 hours, 40 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Fact: Several people have shown why open turns doesn't show multiple accounts.
Fact: No one has shown why they do.
Fact: According to the poll, more than half the people on here would choose to hide their turns given the choice.
Fact: Until the first games ended a few weeks ago, everyone thought turns would be hidden at the end. That's how the game always was.

So I guess more than half the people are cheaters since people are accusing everyone who would hide their account of cheating.
For all the people who said open turns was just for fun but insist it should be open, you seem really upset about not seeing turns. Sounds like you want to see more than "just fun".
For all the people acting like people who hide their turns are out of line or in the minority or should be penalised, that's more than half of us if we had been given a choice, and that's how EVERYONE expected it to be so quit acting like the people who want the option to hide turns are the ones asking for special treatment. It's the people demanding to see everyone elses turns who are new and asking for special powers.

2996 days, 20 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

HLR there's no contradiction in anything I've said. I don't have time to climb to the top and I DO want to make it doubly difficult for the childish and insecure to do so.
The game is indeed about fun but the leaderboard is specifically intended to be competitive play. Competition and fun are not contradictory and never have been.
If all turns are open for viewing there is no advantage in seeing turns. If all turns are closed there is no advantage. If *some* people's turns can be viewed and not others there is advantage, and that I don't like. You've specifically engineered a situation where there is advantage, and it's yours not mine.

You got what you wanted HLR, your turns are now hidden.
None of your arguments have any bearing on my current request - they're completely separate.
The games that you hide, don't count for the leaderboard. You can keep the stats, they just don't count for competitive play. I frankly don't want to fight high ranking cheaters and the harder we make if for them to cover their tracks the better, the easiest way to do that is to make their turns open to public scrutiny.
This also makes it much easier on Joshua, and other admins. Frankly the players themselves are MUCH better at sniffing out a cheater than an admin jumping in at turn 60+, no offense to the admin. He'll simply know the flow of the game and if something odd happened he can report it.
Cheating is not merely from multiple accounts, unreported bugs, and other oddities can creep up.
I have 27 outrider class hulls in one of my starbases, I'm the borg. I've reported the bug, but they're still there. That's not a serious issue, but if they were say gorbies, well, that's more serious.

Kaska and I have no quarrel, he wants to stay private and not climb the ranks, that's perfectly fine.
Why not you HLR? Why does this bother you? You want to have a rank for victory? I think you should earn it like everyone else. I don't like you being a "special" citizen, sorry. This is a seperate argument: I want you to earn your rank as fleet admiral in a transparent way. What are you so afraid of?

This is likely really simple to implement in code I'm sure Joshua. A warning near the "keep turns hidden" button that says the game will not contribute to leaderboard score.

Just so that you don't repeat your tired list of pseudo-facts I'll repeat my request again in plain english: "All leaderboard games should be open and viewable. Statistics earned in games where turns are kept hidden should not contribute to leaderboard rank."

2996 days, 20 hours, 30 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant” a well-known quote from U.S. Supreme Court.

I think Dungeonmaster has a good suggestion. A condition of being listed as a leader on the leader board could be opting to play viewable games. This basically helps remove the public reward for those that play multiple accounts in the same game.

Fact: There are cheaters and quitters here. Much much more than I remember from the ladder games. It only takes a few to ruin it for everyone.

Fact: Playing vs someone that controls multiple races in the same game is not fair and not fun.

One way or another, the cheating and quiting needs to be addressed for the games to be fair and fun. One player per game per zip code (IP address), a new tournament board where those that enter are randomly assigned to special tournament games at the start of every month (so you have to find your own allies inside the game), or some transparency at the end of the games. Something. . .

2996 days, 19 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungeonmaster:

Be careful about how you write some things, becouse it does sound like you are asuming that those of us who would prefer having our turns hidden (mind this, the majority of us according to http://vgaplanets.nu/discussion/poll-if-optional) are all cheaters.

You guys keep demonizing those of us who don't want to reveal our particular tactics when the thing is that, in 2 decades playing this game, I have never ever seen a single hosting site that showed the turns to the rest of the players like this. Even in very serious sites that ran "unofficially oficial" national championships.

So, please guys, slow down and relax. We have accepted having our turns checked by an admin, we have accepted not beeing able to see the other players turns, we have accepted not getting any ranking... what else should be do? A pilgrim to some remote monastir where we are going to get flailed and crucified to pay for our sins?

Valhalla:

I am totally with you. Quitters and cheaters are a big problem. At this precise moment I am playing a very deteriorated game where half of the players quit very early, leaving one player with almost half of the universe for his own. I can cope with a game like that once. As a regular basis? No way! Several suggestions have been made, like adding some dynamic reliability ranking (nothing to do with any scoring but with a record of how likely to stay in the game and deliver the turns on time a player is). But that would be a whole different discussion. A very important one if you ask me. Way more important than turns beeing public or not in my opinion.

2996 days, 19 hours, 54 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

There's been a lot of veiled (and not so veiled) name-calling and insulting going on here.

Yes, there are cheaters out there. Fact of life. There's really no way to stop someone from playing multiple identities. Limit per zip code? Are you crazy????? There are tens of thousands of people in my zip code alone. Limit per IP address? And if someone plays from a public location, or a shared internet connection, I guess they are just SOL. .Nu likely doesn't want their money anyways (when ti goes pay to play)... yea, right....

Making turns of completed games viewable doesn't stop people who want to exploit the system.

Beyond that, the thinly veiled accusations that anyone who wants their turns to be private is a cheater is, quite bluntly, insulting. I, personally, would rather my turns not be visible, but am not at this time going to go to Joshua to request it. But on the bases of my desire, it would appear that a few here would, just on that opinion, accuse me of cheating.

If you ("you" being ANYONE) are going to start tossing around words like "cheater", you damn well better be able to supply proof of said cheating, or you only demonstrate your own lack of character.

2996 days, 19 hours, 16 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

/Quote Dungeonmaster (about players who hides their turns):
That's an insufficient penalty - there's nothing to prevent the "secretive" players from starting a new account and simply looking at everyone's turns from there, so win-win. Please throw them off the leaderboard.
/unquote

/Quote Dungeonmaster
Frankly the players themselves are MUCH better at sniffing out a cheater than an admin jumping in at turn 60+, no offense to the admin. He'll simply know the flow of the game and if something odd happened he can report it.
/unquote

I think it might be a solution to only allow players who have played a considerable amount of turns in a particular game (maybe even "all the way thru, without dropping before the game is over") to view the turns. IF they don't hide their turns, of cause.

So a new account wont help them, unless they had a second account allready in that particular game from the start.
This of cause means, that they ARE cheaters, and are what we are trying to find.
However, in that case, if they want to see the turns of other players via their second account, this one has to be viewable, meaning if they cheat (exchange ships with the other, hidden Account), this can be seen by looking at this UNhidden Account.

And if they act suspiciously, informing the admins to look at their turns would be appropriate.
(I don't know if it is really necessary to check the turns of every "Hidder" by default, or just if other players insist on that...? Might safe some manpower on the Dev's side... .)

=======================================================================

Btw, if in the end of the games, the only things that would be visible, be the position of the Ships and the owner of the planets for each turn... would that be enough to determine if someone is cheating ?
I mean, so far the main concern is to find if 2 Races work together in a way the shouldn't, like one race is only serving as an additional Shipyard for the other, which i think can be easily determined by observing Shipmovment and switching Bases.
Or am i mistaken here ?

Seriously, would this proposal:
A: Help finding cheaters ?
B: be open, yet limited enough for any Hidders to accept this (maybe with an option to Anonymize the Ships down to their mere ID-Number) ?

=======================================================================

Besides that, i think it is a really good idea to not allow players who wants to play for the Leadership to pick the game.. just Signing up, choosing a race and waiting in what Planet-System (Game) you will end up.
That way DoubleAccounting wont be possible (or at least you can't count on that, due to the Ramdomness of the Assignment).
And if someone continously drops out of games until he ends up in a game with someone in particular.. someone he could have been found in almost any other games he played before.... can this be found out in an easy way ?

Regards,
Shrambot

2996 days, 19 hours, 13 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I understand your points. I don't think the percentage of cheaters is high - maybe 5%. One double account in every 2nd game is enough to really mess things up in 50% of the games.

I do think that Nu has a serious problem that, while it existed in the past, was not this rampant.

Proof is hard, but if someone posts here under one account and signs off with the name of another account and those 2 are in the same games you have to wonder. Having said that, I suspect most people that cheat do not post on the forums.

So maybe IP address and zip codes won't work. Maybe viewing turns will help, but only a little. The fact is that this is a much bigger problem now, here, in this system, than it was in the past with many other hosts.

Here are some new ideas:

Only "tournament"games are ranked. You have to make it to Lt to play. These games start once per quarter, your race is chosen randomly and you are randomly assigned to one of many games. You can drop or quit at any time as usual but your rank will be based on how your races does at the end of the game. Dropped races can NOT be picked up by other players (or teams of other players as typically happens here). Tournament Score will simply be an average of the rank your race finished the tournament games. We keep the no more than 2 allies rule but its your individual rank that matters, not your alliance (no adding your 8th place buddy to the winning team to boost their score).

This minimizes the benefits of multiple accounts and pre-game alliances - players would have to start fresh in each tournament game and earn their own passage. The best players can play any race the cards deal them. If you don't like that then player pick their top 3 race choices and the Host decides (this creates more work for the host).

I can see how posting turns is problematic and will only go so far to dealing with the cheating problem. So take a look at my solution above for tournaments - the structure of it makes it harder to cheat. You would have to build multiple accounts up to the rank of Lt and then get very lucky and have them randomly in the same games.

If you don't like this solution, then my challenge to you is in addition to shooting it down, put yourself out there and spend some time proposing something better.

Valhalla

I did not intend to call anyone a cheater. Only to say that they are out there, likely most are not posting here, and that a small minority, if unchecked, can ruin the game for the rest of us. One way or another we need a realistic system that makes it harder to cheat and does not rely to much on the Host to police it. If you don't like my ideas, propose something better!

2996 days, 19 hours, 5 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I think it might be a solution to only allow players who have played a considerable amount of turns in a particular game (maybe even "all the way thru, without dropping before the game is over") to view the turns. IF they don't hide their turns, of cause.

I like the idea of unlocking things so that we create higher levels of play with a lower amount of cheaters and quitters. My proposal above requires making Lt before playing ranked tourney games to do just that.

For the new Nu players that might not yet know what they are doing or what the ramifications are of the choices they make (thats all you guys flying your cloakers around uncloaked!), I would NOT want to restrict forum access. These people need access to the strategy guides and other resources.

Also, I doubt that many people that actually cheat are posting here much.

I support your idea in general but not in the specifics.

2996 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Not getting rank for hidden games is all I care about.
I frankly will play in a game with chaos1357, HLR and kaska all together and you can keep your turns completely secret - so long as you don't get promoted.
It's not a "cheater label" that I'm after.
Rank and the leaderboard should mean something, it should be as clean a fight as possible and that means open to public scrutiny. Very public accolades and title should have a very public basis.

2996 days, 19 hours, 0 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Valhalla, I hijacked your idea here:

http://vgaplanets.nu/discussion/tackling-people-joining-with-various-accounts-and-pre-made-groups

Please, take this conversation there. I think your idea where the system is assigning you to games instead of you choosing the games is brilliant.

Double-accounting and pre-made groups could well ruin this whole project, and we don't want that. Joshua is putting tons of hard work on this. Hell, he has been implementing changes and checking the forums during the weekend!

We have bitched and complained for long enough already. It's time to be constructive and creative. This is what betas and forums are for.

2996 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Kaska you may be fine with no leaderboard rankings, and in once sense i'm fine because I have no intention of going for any championship matches, but it's not fair to anyone who wouldn't choose to show their turns (more than half), and i'm not arguing here just for my sake, i'm arguing for whats fair, With all the screams of "cheaters" going on, I doubt many people want to post in here less they too be called cheaters.

Chaos: you pretty much summed it except that there is nothing thinly veiled about the calling us all cheaters for not wanting to show our turns. They've been pretty direct I think.

Dungeonmaster, there's lots of contradiction in your statements.
Your latest post says if some turns are hidden and other not, that there is a competitive advantage, but back in your second post here, you claimed it's no help at all :
"COMPETITIVE aspects specific to vga nu will yield to those who play the most games, that's the way it's set up"
there's a contradiction, you specifically said COMPETITIVE ASPECTS only have to do with number of games played
then you say it's "irrelevant that people "steal" or "spy" on each other's strategy"
you stated very clear that opening turns has nothing to do with competitive advantages and are now yelling how unfair the competitive advantage is. Maybe you need to look up contradiction in the dictionary. seriously.

Valhalla, in response to your facts which are not in dispute, I draw your attention to the main question all the openturners keep ignoring.How does open turns have any effect on multiple accounts? So far a vague quote is the only argument.
Dungeonmaster has pretty much glossed over the question in favor of screaming more loudly that all people wanting their turns hidden are cheaters. Possible unreported bugs are not cheating and the weakest excuse so far to go nosing through someones account. Far more bugs seem to hinder than help

Shrambot, I applaud your effort at real solutions, random game assignments has potential, but that suggestion and some of your other statements seem to overlook the issue. It's not whether multiple accounts exist, it's that they don't look any different from allies coordinating well. At one point you suggest that any allying is cheating : " if they cheat (exchange ships with the other, hidden Account)". I've seen lots of ships exchanging between races, I don't think it's a good indicator of anything other than how coordinated 2 (or more) people are. You also mention the suspicious behaviour of someone joining and giving everything to another race. This I do have a major problem with, but there's no rule against it. Anyone can legitimately join a game and give all ships to another race or send them to attack an allies enemy with no intent of succeeding in the game, but just to do damage. You can't tell the difference between it and a multiple account scenario.

EDIT: Some posts appeared while i was writing that. Ammending accordingly with new post.

2996 days, 18 hours, 40 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I like valhallas idea with a slight modification. Let the higher ranked games (like lieutenant only joining) be worth more than the main games. Not the only ones that count, but let them count for significantly more, so that you have to increase the challenge and level of play to actually advance to the upper echelons (like most games needing to kill more experienced badguys to get the higher experience rewards). This won't deny newbies some success. And it prevents what we are already starting to see with players winning games at turn 52 with full points because everyone gave up.

Also, since they are higher ranked and needing experienced players, players will be less likely to drop, eliminating the people who join midgame to help allies. In this case I'd say eliminate midgame joining entirely unless the leaving player chooses to give his race to someone (thus causing no sudden change in alliances). Or give a surrender and die button so people can choose to leave without causing the havoc of letting a random person in.

2996 days, 18 hours, 23 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

/quote Dungeonmaster:
Not getting rank for hidden games is all I care about.
/unquote

May i ask, why ?
I just ask because i consider to have my turns hidden.
Why do you want me not to rank, _should_ i choose to hide ?

Besides, there have been numerous proposales made by now, to make life for cheaters much moer difficult while still allowing hidden players to rank; i honestly would like to here your oppinion about that.

Thanks in advance,
Shrambot

2996 days, 18 hours, 18 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

HLR if anyone's screaming loudly here it's you.
There are no contradictions. There can be a competitive component to the game i.e. a "ladder" or "leaderboard" or whatever you want to call it - and there can be non-competitive play.
People who play the most games will own the leaderboard, that's plain simple, fair.

There is NOTHING you can do with your turn in terms of strategy that I don't already know - I've said this many times. This game is very old. What is NOT fair is for you to have an admiral's rank and not have visible turns for others to scrutinize your RANK. That is specifically I want to see if you CHEATED to get there.
I don't care about your non-ladder games, I care about your RANK in a ladder and I want the games that give you rank to be public because rank is a very public statement. I cannot state things more clearly.

2996 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

There's nothing clear about that, if you don't care about my games because you can't learn anything from them, then why do you want to see them at all? You say people only need to scrutinize my rank? They can see my rank without seeing my turns. How do you scrutinize someones rank by looking at their games? That makes no sense at all.

2996 days, 18 hours, 4 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I will learn if you cheated. Hulls appearing out of thin air, ships moving too far because of some bug or other. Proof of foreknowledge. This is a cheating countermeasure. Many people have said it in plain English any refusal to understand this is tantamount to intellectual dishonesty.

You have closed games, as of right now. You're very concerned about an open rank aren't you HLR? Why?

2996 days, 17 hours, 58 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungeonmaster:

I have explained the same so many times that it's beyond boring already. I ll just copy paste what I already posted here previously:

"Nobody is claiming having any superior brilliant tactics that work like an "I win" button. I have repeated the same so many times that I am starting to worry about how to explain this. It's about future enemies checking my particular style of playing in past games and adjusting their tactics accordingly."

Regarding your cheating countermeasures:

a) An admin is going to personally check our turns.

b) It has been pointed out already how this measure is pretty much useless against pre-made groups and double-accounting.

2996 days, 17 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungeonmaster - I haven't officially requested Joshua hide my turns, and as far as I know, he hasn't (unless he did without telling me?). But even if I did, why should my desire to keep my tactics secret prevent me from playing for rank? Unless you ARE accusing me of cheating?

I have never played anywhere else where one's game actions were visible to all after the game was over. Not just Planets, but other games as well. This was the first time that happened, and as had been stated NO ONE outside of the admin staff expected it to happen here, because it is so unusual.

As I said far above here, I would have less (if any) actual objection to my turns being visible after the game to the other players in the game. While it would still possibly give a current opponent an insight into my tactics, it wouldn't be much beyond what they would have gained if they were playing against me in a game. My objection is that without that limit any current opponent could just browse my previous games to find my preferred weapon loads, colony setups, cargo loads, and so on. Information that should not be available to any player without that player actually running the risk of loosing by playing against me.

2996 days, 17 hours, 41 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungenmaster has proposed a solution here.

So have I. Kaska made a new thread to discuss it.

Its easy to attack other peoples ideas and proposed solutions. Its true that many ideas will not do what they are intended to do.

Its much harder to propose your own solutions or offer constructive criticism to help solve the underlying problem. You can look at Dungenmaster's ideas here, mine in the new thread Kaska started. . . Or you can step up to the plate and propose your own solution to the cheating issue that keeps coming up again and again in NU. I think it is fair to say that a lot of us really like what Joshua is doing here but think the cheating and quitting is out of control and is much higher than we have experienced elsewhere. What solutions do you have to help fix this issue? Lets hear them.

2996 days, 17 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Perhaps Joshua should mark the profiles "turns 11 (hidden)" so everybody can see who has chosen this option.

I like this side so far and appreciate the work but I dont't like it to be called a cheater without any reason. I think all ist written (pro and contra) and this discussion should end here.

=> valhallas post

2996 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

@ HLR:
Well, if it looks like i am suggesting that "any allying is cheating", then i got to watch what i am writing more carefully, because that was clearly not my intention.
Of cause, i know that you can't determine if 2 races are cooperating so close because it is a DoubleAccount or 2 Roommates, for instance.

Furthermore, joining a dead race to help your pal is not DoubleAccounting, but is it fair game ?
Does having one race merely serving as a secondary Shipyard has anything to do with the spirit of the game ?

What are we REALLY talking about here ?
Sportsmanship. Fairness.

This has nothing to do with "following the rules", Fairness and Sportsmanship are going way beyond this.

So, i can only say what I think is unfair:
- Taking over a dead race to stab someone in the back.
- DoubleAccounting. (However, if i KNOW from the start of a game that someone is DoubleAccounting, this makes it sort of fair again, as i can counter this.... should i find propper allies, who are also concerned about a fair game)

(And i am well aware that in RealLife Allies could shift, and your best friend can stab you in the back... i just don't play a game to recreate the trouble of RL here. I want to escape it... well, sort of.)

@Dungeonmaster:
Finally we get to the real thing.
I was always wondering how you wanted to determine by looking at the turns of another player if he is cheating or not.
Honestly, i have no idea how to make hulls appear out of thin air, nor to move ships in such a way.
Also i can't grasp what "Proof of foreknowledge" is about. Are you refering to DoubleAccointing here ? (i am not pulling your leg here, i honestly don't know what you meant)

If you are refering to someone just exploiting such bugs as mentioned above, however, this is indeed an issue that needs to be addressed.
Tho i hope that there are enough honest players, like you, that report any bugs they find, so there will be no bugs to exploit, in the end.
Nevertheless, finding 10.000 MC on all of your ships ou of a sudden and not reporting that... while being a serious exploit, you can not build a strategy on that, as you would, if you were really cheating. IHMO.
The question is, what impact such bugs have on the outcome of the games here, in comparison to say DoubleAccounting... .

Regards,
Shrambot

2996 days, 16 hours, 59 minutes ago

humanlightningrod

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungeonmaster: I'm not sure if you meant that all along or are just making it up now just to say you had a reason all along, but either way I'm pretty sure no one else here was suggesting that the cheating was from hacking the system and altering what a player has or seeing into enemies turns before host run.
Seriously, is anyone suggesting that? This is not a rhetorical question. I've been assuming that the only cheating being argued was multiple accounts. Has anyone suspected that kind of cheating? I thought I read something (on a different site) about a built in program detecting cheaters by comparing what reasources and such there should be before and after every turn, but if someone gets extra hulls, maybe they've disabled it or it somehow only applied to email turns. I'm pretty sure Joshua didn't mean hacking style cheating either because in a different thread he seemed very confident about the websites security.

2996 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Shrambot, I seriously, honestly have a pack of outrider class hulls in my starbase, as the borg. They appeared magically. This is a bug which doesn't affect the game I'm in, which is about to end. Someone has had a starbase produce a pack of biocides, out of thin air. People see minefields from accross the map, planets listing their mineral content, etc...
There will always be bugs, even the old Timhost still had bugs years and years later (some of these became "features", anyhow). There will always be ways to cheat, use bugs to your advantage, multiple accounts. The BEST way to limit cheating is to be open with the turns. See something suspicious? Well you can confirm that when the game's done and maybe, just maybe get a cheater booted.
What's the cheater going to do? Make a new account and keep cheating, but what hurts the cheater? His rank, his username.

Chaos: The game already gives the players sufficient info (mass) to guess what's to be expected. Your colonies are going to have... lemme see: clans, mines, factories and some defense posts. There's no mystery, really. Will I pause to ponder a clan drop because I know you like defense posts? Probably not. I prefer heavy blasters on my cubes, figak likes x-rays. He prefers the biocide, I prefer the annihilation. Is this crucial game-winning information? Not likely. When the game is said and done, there's really nothing to hide.
Is it fun to watch it all play out in the end? Absolutely.

2996 days, 16 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

HLR I don't care how, or why, someone cheats. I care about the poor sods who get their asses kicked and NEVER get a chance to figure it out on their own. Some guy walks away with an admiral rank and they're left arguing from the point of view of an ensign.
The people that I've completely annihilated in my current game can go back and watch it turn by turn in gory detail. That's fair. I deserve my rank and it's clear to all what I did to get it.

2996 days, 16 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

"There will always be bugs, even the old Timhost still had bugs years and years later (some of these became "features", anyhow). There will always be ways to cheat, use bugs to your advantage, multiple accounts. The BEST way to limit cheating is to be open with the turns."

Since prior to .Nu, there was never a way for players to view other players turns in a completed game, but you say there will always be ways to cheat, what options are you aware of to limit cheating in Timhost games? It CAN NOT be open turns as implemented here, because the mechanics didn't really support that. So, how about it?

I say again, no one outside of the .Nu staff knew that player's turns were going to become open after the game was completed. Considering they only go back as far as the time machine says it was implemented after the games started. Are you seriously saying we should blindly accept playing a game who's mechanics change AFTER the start of the game, and that anyone who has a problem with that must be suspected of cheating??? Seriously????

Wow... I hope I'm never in a game with you.

As for that info you say the game already gives... hmmm... mass? I can cheat that. Yes, we all know my colonies will have clans mines and factories... how many? Will you need a single lizard class, or 2 to have a shot? Do I develop clans with a "colony in a can" approach, or "drop X and let it grow"? What sort of expansion patterns do I use? Etc.

As for is weapon loadout game winning.... How many fighters do I like to put in my Virgos? How many torps in my Missouris? Am I likely to tow lower tech ships to planets for defense, or rely on my front line forces? Sure, individually theses aren't going to win you the game.. but knowing what I (or you, or figak, or anyone else) likes to put on their ships combat wise WILL help you with your combat order and win you more battles.

And yes, when the game is said and done, there is something to hide. MY STRATEGY.

2996 days, 16 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

"HLR I don't care how, or why, someone cheats. I care about the poor sods who get their asses kicked and NEVER get a chance to figure it out on their own."

There's this thing called "asking". It's rather more polite then telling someone, after the game is finished (without any prior warning) that they must share all their tactics and strategy with the person they just started a new game against.

You (or anyone else) ask me what general strategies I use, how I load my ships, etc.... if I"m not in a game with you, then I'm likely to give you a moderately detailed. answer. If I'm currently playing you though, I'm not saying a word....

um... wow... idea.... new thread time.

2996 days, 16 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

You're in a Beta Chaos1357. There's no expectation of anything BUT change.
This is not a game "mechanics" argument. This is an argument about RANK and frankly I don't think you deserve public rank without public scrutiny. That's what I'm positing here. You can play and keep secret whatever you want, but you can't expect an admiral's pin on your shoulder without the rest of us saying "yeah good move there on turn 49, gave you the edge you needed".

No one is arguing about keeping your turns hidden when you want to. I just don't want you on the leaderboard with a pile of hidden games. The structure of the leaderboard has already been changed and it can be refined. Players with hidden turns should not have leaderboard ranking from those turns.

2996 days, 15 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Dungeonmaster:

While I am accepting not beeing in the leaderboard, let me ask you this:

Since our turns are going to be personally checked by an admin, why shouldn't I be able to rank up?

2996 days, 15 hours, 36 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Are you looking for validation from your peers? That's what your rank should mean. Accomplishment and validation from your peers. The admin, while excellent I'm sure, do not know the particular game as well those who played the game with you. Certainly not if hundreds of games become the norm. They have better things to do.

2996 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

I have never had any doudts about kaska or hlr being vaild good honest players.

Just thought I would throw that out.

my concerns are the same as kaska and hlr as far as playing in good games.

11 people go in blind not knowing where there homeworld is until the game starts.

the 11 players finish the game.

right now alot of the games have new players in them. At some point there will be games for new players and games for more ranked players. I will choose the more ranked games just because hopefully the 11 players will finish the game. That will solve some issues.

Now I think if a player resigns there race should be forced to be open for at least 5 turns ? there has to be some kind of immediate penalty to the race. This resigning and having a new player setup to take over drives me nuts.

2996 days, 13 hours, 24 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Rank has nothing to do with validation from my peers.

Rank is admission to the inner system games.

Rank is my record of my accomplishments.

If you and I play in the same open game, whither or not I choose to allow others to view my turns has nothing to do with my accomplishments in said game, or the rank I gain from it.

If you want to set up a private game and only open it up to people who's turns you can view, great for you. But you are asking for the people who don't want to let everyone view their turns to not be allowed to advance in the game. That's a "Bad Idea" as far as I'm concerned.

2996 days, 11 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

So, Dungeon,

You don't trust me not cheating.

You don't trust an admin checking my turn.

Why should I trust you not cheking my turn to take advantage of that in future games?

You do seem too adamant about this. It does look suspicious. I don't want to play with people who will gather information about my way of playing that wouldn't have been able to gather with the normal game mechanics and then act accordingly. That is cheating.

2996 days, 10 hours, 38 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Chaos, your accomplishments are your stats. Keep your stats, KT sunk and the whole bit. Your rank is something different entirely. Obviously you don't want stats, you want rank, or as a synonym "status". If other players have their turns visible I don't want to see an admiral's pin on someone who hides all his turns. That's absurd. I think people who hide should not get rank. Period.

2996 days, 10 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Kaska you have 51 planets, 14 starbases and 68 warships by turn 58.
I have 263 planets, 96 starbases and 187 warships by turn 60. I have more cubes than you have planets.
Even if you truly believe that somehow you're going to find some sort of decisive information buried in the records - which I don't believe because I've played enough of this damn game - to be perfectly blunt I have everything to lose by showing you my turn.

I want to be able to see your turn to check for cheating, nothing else. In fact I don't even care until someone else raises the alarm, or if I were to come across something fishy in my own games. I should be able to pick apart your turns when all is said and done. If the game doesn't contribute to rank, I don't care.

2996 days, 10 hours, 2 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Lets put an end to this discussion and move on. Please do not post in this thread any further.

No further changes are going to be made.

2996 days, 9 hours, 27 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Know what, screw this all.

What interest can I have in playing deteriorated games with tons of quitters and cheaters, low ranking games with newbies who don't mean a challenge and all this while beeing accused of cheating and beeing told I am a bad player by other players who are not giving away any ideas and are only pointing fingers?

That was it. I had enough. Bye bye.

I ll create a thread so that somebody can take over my turn.

2996 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes ago

RE: Remove the ability to see the turns of complete games.

Oh my, more childishness. Joshua I respect your decision but I find it deplorable that rank has no real meaning. Great interface, game on.