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Dio Brando
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30 minutes ago, Vack said:

Contrary to popular belief, Dio is not in fact Ibnar. Sketchy, you are fake news.

This man speaks the truth.

1 hour ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

You're citing something from 2015, but this is way more than Alex did about Greene.

Calling on admin to delete stuff from people who weren't aware their gov was cheating is too far, imo. We're talking about newer players who have smaller city counts, not game breaking unbalance... if they weren't growing from selling resources, they could have done it through other means, which is probably part of why it took so long to track this down. Admin was told a month ago and didn't do anything about it, so punishing those players (especially considering they're already in a war) is a lot of punishment for a problem that lacks intentionality.

Heya. Hope you're doing well Thrax, we haven't talked in quite some time! :)

9 hours ago, Dio Brando said:
  • Remove Nova cities purchased with exploit money,
  • Remove bank/nation inventories that are filled with exploit money to a great degree,
  • Reset the offender that didn't generate the money but regardless used it to grow his nation, whether he knew it or not
  • Ban the offender who was aware of it and failed to report it.

This is where there's a disconnect. Low-tier players who very clearly benefited (so did just about everyone else) but not to any substantial extent would not be punished under these "instructions" as some have taken to calling them; these all apply to outstanding cases where people received an outstanding amount of cheat money directly and without any real attached price tag. There are some that want more, but I doubt many of the people in the lowest section of Nova had any idea what double-accepting would even do, much less have the ability to exploit the game.

That said, the idea that this is 'a lot of punishment' isn't quite true. You're referring to Greene but that isn't quite a situation that applies to this particular one. This was nigh-game breaking if given the opportunity to go on.

Cheers!

Edited by Dio Brando
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People need to accept that there will be no solution that is going to acceptable to everyone. For some it will be to little, for others too much. When leaving situations such as these it's better that neither party is really happy. A good compromise gives a little to each while leaving each feeling like the wanted more. To an extend, that's kind of the case here. The first attempt was a removal of the ill gotten gains, the additional compromise by the admin from the response was removal of cities. This was his compromise, he might be willing to go further, and threads like this are a good step, however I doubt further action will be taken.

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm in the camp that wants the offending parties banned, and the knowing benefactors reset -- at least to something around 10-15 cities depending on their benefiting. It can prove difficult to do assign guilt in some cases however.

 

I often talk about how there's a part on the admin for the health of the game, and a part on the player base. The admin provided a first step, some nations I've been told have self-deleted/re-rolled involved with this. Those who have not? The players have the power to make them pay. They've no allies anymore. I doubt they'll get any good ones any time soon. 

 

So for those who want more punishment ..

 

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12 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

This man speaks the truth.

Heya. Hope you're doing well Thrax, we haven't talked in quite some time! :)

This is where there's a disconnect. Low-tier players who very clearly benefited (so did just about everyone else) but not to any extreme extent would not be punished under these "instructions" as some have taken to calling them; these all apply to outstanding cases where people received an outstanding amount of cheat money directly and without any real attached price tag. There are some that want more, but I doubt many of the people in the lowest section of Nova had any idea what double-accepting would even do, much less have the ability to exploit the game.

Cheers!

Then unless I'm misreading you, the only part of this Alex isn't really on top of is that he hasn't done anything about Akyuro, who tried to benefit from the exploit and only reported it once he had failed.

Maybe I didn't explain where I was coming from enough. But I have the whole thing with Greene fresh in my memory, where Alex did literally nothing (well technically, he did push out an "update" that was just him saying "oh hey, it's now explicitly against the rules to buy in game money with real life money to get around the credit limit!"), told the community to police itself, and then I was stuck trying to dismantle a coalition that had been bought with in game money. As a result of going through that, it's difficult for me to divorce some of the calls for punishment I'm seeing from political convenience.

Edited by Spaceman Thrax

Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe.

 

~ William S. Burroughs

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The investigation, in my opinion, hasn't finished, and will take more time than just the 24-48 hours needed to identify Pooball and NR. We need an announcement from Alex that he's going to do a thorough investigation before acting further. Given the length of time this has been going on, a proper investigation cannot finish within only 48 hours. The worst offenders have been partially punished, but we need to know exactly what happened.

 

I assume Alex's primary priority right now is identifying and fixing the exploit. Once that's done, the investigation can commence in full.

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10 minutes ago, Spaceman Thrax said:

Then unless I'm misreading you, the only part of this Alex isn't really on top of is that he hasn't done anything about Akyuro, who tried to benefit from the exploit and only reported it once he had failed.

Maybe I didn't explain where I was coming from enough. But I have the whole thing with Greene fresh in my memory, where Alex did literally nothing (well technically, he did push out an "update" that was just him saying "oh hey, it's now explicitly against the rules to buy in game money with real life money to get around the credit limit!"), told the community to police itself, and then I was stuck trying to dismantle a coalition that had been bought with in game money. As a result of going through that, it's difficult for me to divorce some of the calls for punishment I'm seeing from political convenience.

Not quite. He deleted cities back till 4/28, but those nations had all received disproportionately large sums of money. That's where resets come in. It's harder on Alex to take action in the form of bans, but tbh I feel like it also may be necessary.

I'm not obstinately held onto a specific course of action, though, and tbh, if more information comes to light and Alex eventually decides to be more lenient, I don't think I'd kick up a shitstorm.

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3 minutes ago, Micchan said:

We need to burn all those resources they created, there are two huge blocs not at war, just saying :ph34r:

The resources being burnt would for the most part be actual resources, not illegally generated ones (I feel like there's a Trump meme to be found somewhere in here). The vast, vast majority of that is held in Nova's off-shore, which Sheepy either permanently froze or deleted.

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3 minutes ago, Dio Brando said:

The resources being burnt would for the most part be actual resources, not illegally generated ones (I feel like there's a Trump meme to be found somewhere in here). The vast, vast majority of that is held in Nova's off-shore, which Sheepy either permanently froze or deleted.

I WANT TO SEE WARS

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This is some of the most laughable undermoderation I've seen in one of these games. Not only did Alex only reverse a fraction of the benefits the exploiters gained, but he didn't even delete or ban the two players he himself specifically named as the chief exploiters.

The players attacking cheaters is not moderation for rulebreaking, moderation for rulebreaking is moderation for rulebreaking.

Letting Nova keep most of their ill-gotten gains and saying "lol you guys deal with it" when it comes to punishment for blatant cheating is honestly pretty disrespectful to everyone who doesn't cheat, apparently we're all idiots for not cheating since the worst punishment you get is a small fraction of your profit being deleted.

The NationStates mods would have deleted the alliance itself, banned Pooball & North 14, and nation deleted half the gov just saying.

Edited by Dad
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For the record, no one in tCW asked for any resources from Poo/Aku, we don't want illicit gains created by cheaters and we would never accept any under any circumstances.  

1 hour ago, Dad said:

This is some of the most laughable undermoderation I've seen in one of these games. Not only did Alex only reverse a fraction of the benefits the exploiters gained, but he didn't even delete or ban the two players he himself specifically named as the chief exploiters.

The players attacking cheaters is not moderation for rulebreaking, moderation for rulebreaking is moderation for rulebreaking.

Letting Nova keep most of their ill-gotten gains and saying "lol you guys deal with it" when it comes to punishment for blatant cheating is honestly pretty disrespectful to everyone who doesn't cheat, apparently we're all idiots for not cheating since the worst punishment you get is a small fraction of your profit being deleted.

The NationStates mods would have deleted the alliance itself, banned Pooball & North 14, and nation deleted half the gov just saying.

Its a shame that Alex's original idea was to pretty much do nothing and allow $86b in cheated resources to be used with out any form of punishment, only back flipping when faced with massive community outrage. At least we (BK/TCW/Horsemen/Aku) did something about it, but I agree players actions are at best a band aid and not any form of resolution to inadequate and inconsistent moderation.

Edited by Sphinx
typo
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2 minutes ago, Mack g said:

Just ip ban everyone involved. Problem solved.

On many counts, this is absolutely justified, and bans have been administered by Sheepy. You can read about them here. That said, there are many other cases of 'cheating' or profiting from cheating that by far do not fit the criterion for justified banning of players; this applies doubly so for entire alliances.

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5 hours ago, Sphinx said:

For the record, no one in tCW asked for any resources from Poo/Aku, we don't want illicit gains created by cheaters and we would never accept any under any circumstances.  

Its a shame that Alex's original idea was to pretty much do nothing and allow $86b in cheated resources to be used with out any form of punishment, only back flipping when faced with massive community outrage. At least we (BK/TCW/Horsemen/Aku) did something about it, but I agree players actions are at best a band aid and not any form of resolution to inadequate and inconsistent moderation.

What did you do? Attack an alliance and knock down some infra. O, thank you very much my whale in shining armor. Our heroes. Truth is as much as I do applaud your wars it's not really doing anything. Its self gratification. 

The players should never be left to self moderate the game. Especially, in cases of cheating. With saying that Alex is in one terrible position since he can never make everyone happy. We say ban the offenders which has been done. We say reset all of NR's nations that grew on dirty money, somewhat done. Those things does little to actually wipe the game of the issues caused by this exploit. Every last one of us has been effected by this, directly or indirectly, that is why we should suck it up and accept a reset. 

Problem with our moderation is that they bend over way too much and too many of us go crying to Alex as soon as there is something they don't like. Look at any suggestions made on these forums and you will see what I mean. By the way that's a general statement and not about this event in particular. 

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FORMER LEADER OF COTL. PLEASE GROW INTERNALLY

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34 minutes ago, Leftbehind said:

What did you do? Attack an alliance and knock down some infra. O, thank you very much my whale in shining armor. Our heroes. Truth is as much as I do applaud your wars it's not really doing anything. Its self gratification. 

The players should never be left to self moderate the game. Especially, in cases of cheating. With saying that Alex is in one terrible position since he can never make everyone happy. We say ban the offenders which has been done. We say reset all of NR's nations that grew on dirty money, somewhat done. Those things does little to actually wipe the game of the issues caused by this exploit. Every last one of us has been effected by this, directly or indirectly, that is why we should suck it up and accept a reset. 

Problem with our moderation is that they bend over way too much and too many of us go crying to Alex as soon as there is something they don't like. Look at any suggestions made on these forums and you will see what I mean. By the way that's a general statement and not about this event in particular. 

In other games, the rules were "f- the mods", and this attitude resulted in rampant cheating because players didn't treat the moderation regime as legitimate. There are tons of ways to cheat that can't be properly controlled, but the important thing is whether they're rare or common. If they're common, it becomes impossible to stamp out because too many people will get implicated and you'll see 25% of the game banned at a snap.

 

The point of forcing players to moderate the game alongside the administration and mods is to prevent this type of attitude from forming. By getting your hands dirty with NR and TF's blood, it sends a clear signal to all players that cheating is unacceptable, and if you cheat, both the administration, mods, and player base will destroy you with the utmost vehemence.

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1 hour ago, Inst said:

In other games, the rules were "f- the mods", and this attitude resulted in rampant cheating because players didn't treat the moderation regime as legitimate. There are tons of ways to cheat that can't be properly controlled, but the important thing is whether they're rare or common. If they're common, it becomes impossible to stamp out because too many people will get implicated and you'll see 25% of the game banned at a snap.

 

The point of forcing players to moderate the game alongside the administration and mods is to prevent this type of attitude from forming. By getting your hands dirty with NR and TF's blood, it sends a clear signal to all players that cheating is unacceptable, and if you cheat, both the administration, mods, and player base will destroy you with the utmost vehemence.

There is a fine line that gets crossed when the player base becomes the moderators. In another game that many of us played we went through a Nazi purge where if players were accused than they would get destroyed until they quit the game. In some cases we pushed out the nazis and in other cases we pushed out completely innocent players. 

I agree that there should be a team effort to moderate the game between us and staff but we cannot be the only ones doing it. So it's a catch 22. 

Like I said before the wars are to make ourselves feel better but do not actually change anything. Cheating will always happen and thinking that we are setting a precedent by attacking players who likely had nothing to do with it doesn't really make people think twice about it. Its the actual moderators reaction or lack of reaction that makes people wonder if it will be worth it. 

FORMER LEADER OF COTL. PLEASE GROW INTERNALLY

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But communities will self-police. In real life, there's a mixture of political power (courts, governments), economic power (corporations, tycoons), and social power (social norms, lynch mobs, etc).


I actually find it extremely problematic that most of the calls for "restraint" come from Chaos, which used to contain NR as a protectorate of TKR. In reality, you guys should be more vehement to distance yourself from Pooball's idiocy so it doesn't tar your coalition.

 

The precedent has already been set in PnW that the community is expected to punish players for cheating as much as administration is. Administration has no strong interest in banning players; Blink, who got banned (and hopefully will be unbanned), was a credit donor, and if I recall, Pooball spent his own money on the game as well. If Alex doesn't have strong incentives to care (strictly, he has indirect incentives in protecting game health, but this may not outweigh cheater income); players who do not cheat or benefit from cheating have incentives to counter cheating.


This type of ethos is necessary, because the alternative is one where cheating is abetted and allowed. When cheating becomes a social norm in the game, everything goes to crap because the community can now protect cheaters from Alex, who will look the other way when cheating happens because he likes his income stream. The game then becomes a question of who can cheat the most and cheat the best. I've seen this in other communities, where the alliance that formerly controlled the top 10 (DBDC) was chronically abusing multis and paying out the wazoo as well.

 

===

 

I'm sorry to say, but I hope that your attempts to defend NR or call for a measured response is providing other alliances with a CB against Chaos, as well as destroying its PR. The proper response would have been to say "we've reviewed the evidence and while we find it persuasive, we'd rather wait for Alex to come to a conclusion. If he rules against Pooball and NR, we'd have no compunction against joining in in the gangbang."

Edited by Inst

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3 minutes ago, Inst said:

But communities will self-police. In real life, there's a mixture of political power (courts, governments), economic power (corporations, tycoons), and social power (social norms, lynch mobs, etc).


I actually find it extremely problematic that most of the calls for "restraint" come from Chaos, which used to contain NR as a protectorate of TKR. In reality, you guys should be more vehement to distance yourself from Pooball's idiocy so it doesn't tar your coalition.

 

The precedent has already been set in PnW that the community is expected to punish players for cheating as much as administration is. Administration has no strong interest in banning players; Blink, who got banned (and hopefully will be unbanned), was a credit donor, and if I recall, Pooball spent his own money on the game as well. If Alex doesn't have strong incentives to care; strictly, he has indirect incentives in protecting game health; players who do not cheat or benefit from cheating have incentives to counter cheating.


This type of ethos is necessary, because the alternative is one where cheating is abetted and allowed. When cheating becomes a social norm in the game, everything goes to crap because the community can now protect cheaters from Alex, who will look the other way when cheating happens because he likes his income stream. The game then becomes a question of who can cheat the most and cheat the best. I've seen this in other communities, where the alliance that controlled the top 10 was chronically abusing multis..

 

===

 

I'm sorry to say, but I hope that your attempts to defend NR or call for a measured response is providing other alliances with a CB against Chaos, as well as destroying its PR. The proper response would have been to say "we've reviewed the evidence and while we find it persuasive, we'd rather wait for Alex to come to a conclusion. If he rules against Pooball and NR, we'd have no compunction against joining in in the gangbang."

Where did I defend Pooball or NR? I could have sworn my issue is with the idea that this rolling actually does anything and how people are high fiving each other as if they just won the lotto max or pretending that they just done the noblest of deeds. 

You may have noticed that I said the game should be rolled back to before the exploit since to me it would be the only way to actually bring the game back to fairness. We still have billions worth of resources all across the game that no one knew was dirty. It will take weeks if not months to wipe them out. Also the logic that the war costs will outweighs what was magically created is completely ridiculous since while some of the players that are warring and burning you have other growing. It does not fix the issue. 

FORMER LEADER OF COTL. PLEASE GROW INTERNALLY

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13 minutes ago, Leftbehind said:

Also the logic that the war costs will outweighs what was magically created is completely ridiculous since while some of the players that are warring and burning you have other growing. It does not fix the issue. 

That's only part of the problem. A very large part of what is being burned are not illegally procured resources, and by far the single biggest destruction stat at the moment is infra, not resources burnt by killing units.

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You're implicitly supporting your former ally within the Chaos sphere by arguing that players shouldn't have to moderate the game and roll your former protectorate-of-an-ally. That has a deontological point; i.e, vigilante justice is abhorred in most civilized societies because there is a strong chance of excess and injustice.

 

However, in a game like this, where cheating is hard to control (I believe one of your partners accused someone I know of operating espionage multis, and I wouldn't put it past that person), social norms and the lynch mob are a crucial consequentialist means of deterring cheating. Sure, most NR members never knew what was going on and we can accuse this rolling of being excessive. But, how about Knightfall? I don't think most TKR members or TCW members knew or cared about the dogpiles TKR instigated against other alliances. They ended up having to bear responsibility of things they probably didn't understand, and TKR lost about 40% of its members and TCW about 60% of its members. How is rolling NR for the sins of its banned government different than that?

 

As I've mentioned before, there's insufficient deterrence effect. If someone wants to run a cheating scheme, set it up in such a way that Alex won't clear everything out, and get themselves banned, they can benefit anyone they want. Aside from Blink beating Pooball up, I'm sure Pooball is enjoying his notoriety and achievement in having broken the in-game economic system for days and generated 209 billion in funds.


Hell, I still wonder why the hell Pooball did it. NR seemed to have been a nice alliance and there seemed to have been zero reason for Pooball to have resorted to cheating to get back at Pantheon; Pantheon was exposed and TKR could have covered any gaps in NR's offense. When I think about it a bit more, it seems as though Pooball did it for the lulz. And for that, I salute you, Pooball. You beat the game by breaking it. We really don't have the ability to reverse fully the damage you've done; a rollback would damage the game even further by deleting thousands of innocent players' accounts who created in the last few months.

 

Congrats Pooball, you've won!

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3 minutes ago, Inst said:

Aside from Blink beating Pooball up, I'm sure Pooball is enjoying his notoriety and achievement in having broken the in-game economic system for days and generated 209 billion in funds.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting Pooball is doing this, but it is incredibly easy to make a nation bypassing an IP ban.

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Just now, Dio Brando said:

To be clear, I'm not suggesting Pooball is doing this, but it is incredibly easy to make a nation bypassing an IP ban.

Between you and me, we already know where the reserve cache has been hidden, right?

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