5/3/2015 - Issues with Generated Money

[Lu Xun]

I was planning to take a step back and post a longer post regarding the debate on this thread, before continuing, in full, on the subject, but I think the idea of an exploit control system can be addressed quickly.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug_bounty_program

 

This is called a bug bounty system, and this kind of system is used by companies such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft to discover and control vulnerabilities in their software. It's important for them because their software is often the target of hackers, and if there is a sufficiently big breach they become vulnerable to liability lawsuits or simply having their brand image dragged through the mud. The main benefit of actually having such a system would be to create a way to more rapidly discover bugs and exploits in the software, so that the developers involved can more quickly cover the vulnerability before black hats get to it.

 

An exploit control system would essentially be a bug bounty program combined with an approval system. It will both reduce the chances of something like the recent infinite money exploit from happening again, while also encouraging player creativity. After all, in the software business people often say "it's not a bug, it's a feature" because what they discover is that unintended functionality is often worth keeping. By encouraging the discovery of both dangerous exploits and exploits that are closer to the "feature, not a bug" model, it will both enhance game security, as well as improve player enjoyment by enabling unintended functionality.

As to costs, if you introduce the payment of credits for bug discovery, first, when you make a payment, you're not actually paying them any money. You are giving them game goods that, if you had not paid them, perhaps, but only perhaps, they would have paid real money for. What does your monetization system look like? What portion of the players actually buy credits, what portion of the players buy credits from other players, what portion of the players simply refuse to touch the pay system? If it's the portion of players that refuse to touch credits, you're not losing any money at all, and in fact, you might actually be gaining money, because giving them free credits encourages them to spend, and like a dealer handing out free drug samples, once they begin using credits they may become addicted. This is often the case in freemium games, the vast gulf is not between players who spend a little bit of money and players who spend more money, but between players who spend no money and players who spend a lot of money, because while most customers will not become what in the industry are called "whales", the majority of paying customers are the ones who, if they'd spend money on a game, would rather spend a good sum rather than peanuts.

 

There is still the question of credit debasement in game, but if you titrate the rewards system so that only major game-breaking bugs make good money, and most minor bugs get the equivalent of thank-yous (i.e, 1 credit payouts, less, or even nothing), the impact shouldn't be too severe.

[Vincent]

Hey, Sheepy already mentioned he have solved the problem manually and lets leave it at that. Case close.

Edited May 7, 2015 by Vincent

[Lu Xun]

You're not reading. Tell me, do you think there are more undiscovered exploits in PnW? The alliance bank bug apparently was a think back in April, and it was so bad that mods had to threaten to zero alliances to prevent people from using it. In May, Pol Pot found an infinite money exploit, used it, got the market closed for 48 hours, and was banned for it. PnW has about 3000 eyeballs looking at it, and maybe 50-60 looking seriously for bugs. If the game were to expand to say, 5000, you'd have almost twice the number, and if the quantity of undiscovered gamebreakers isn't thinned out, these types of incidents should occur twice as often. Moreover, as the game becomes larger, it becomes progressively harder to modify the game database to revert things manually, so having systems planned for long-term expansion can allow you to avoid future snafus like what happened with Pol Pot and the market.

[Fox Fire]

You're not reading. Tell me, do you think there are more undiscovered exploits in PnW? The alliance bank bug apparently was a think back in April, and it was so bad that mods had to threaten to zero alliances to prevent people from using it. In May, Pol Pot found an infinite money exploit, used it, got the market closed for 48 hours, and was banned for it. PnW has about 3000 eyeballs looking at it, and maybe 50-60 looking seriously for bugs. If the game were to expand to say, 5000, you'd have almost twice the number, and if the quantity of undiscovered gamebreakers isn't thinned out, these types of incidents should occur twice as often. Moreover, as the game becomes larger, it becomes progressively harder to modify the game database to revert things manually, so having systems planned for long-term expansion can allow you to avoid future snafus like what happened with Pol Pot and the market.

We don't need rewards for finding exploits. STFU and give it a god damn rest.

[Lu Xun]

Oh yes, I have to deal with you. If it makes you thankful, gloves come off next time, take that as a mark of respect.

[Ayayay]

We don't need rewards for finding exploits. STFU and give it a god damn rest.

Rewards are good though.

[George W. Bush]

Good job Sheepy!

[Lu Xun]

This is literally 7468 words. If you don't want to read it, then skip it. If you think it's too long, tl;dr is "urdum" or alternately "learn2speedread".

 

Since I am no longer in discussion with Fox-Fire, I don't think it's necessary to debate him, or more importantly, to attack him, but I will point out that counterintuitive logic is not the same as "bad" logic. The entire point of logic is so that you can arrive at results that you would not be able to obtain through intuition.

 

I deliberately was not being clear previously because part of my arguments involves detailed analysis of another game, to which I want to offer the most minimal assistance due to my distaste for its management and culture. Since I've more or less let go, and bit provocation, I feel less inclined to do so now, and I'll discuss the reasons more in detail.

 

Also, before I begin, I'd like to mention that I am not against ALL punishment for cheaters, I am only against immediate bans for cheaters, and on practical, not humanitarian terms.

 

In theory, banning cheaters is a great idea, because it achieves three ends; it reduces cheating by removing cheaters from the community, it deters cheaters by showing what the outcome is for cheating, and it addresses the sense of justice of the rest of the playerbase. Out of the three, only the last element is actually fulfilled in accordance with the theory, and while I have to acknowledge its existence (Malone threatened to quit unless Pol Pot was banned), I cannot manage it.

 

In practice, the actual flaws with banning cheaters is that you lose control over cheaters, you fail to deter cheaters because you only rarely actually catch cheaters, and you amay not actually be able to implement penalties and punishments.

 

I think in IRC I mentioned Citizenkane to Malone, and I never quite got to the point, but Citizenkane is an extreme example of how you lose control after you ban cheaters. Citizenkane is an IRCop on Coldfront, which is your server, and she's waving at you from #politicsandwar right now. She was banned from Cyber Nations because she was associated with what she claims is a passed-on nations scheme and what others understood to be plain multis. That's all nice and good, now, isn't it?

 

Here's the problem. After she got banned, (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) mods only rarely came back to Coldfront, possibly in part because Citizenkane, as an IRCop, can instantly detect IPs (proxies have been used in the past to get around this). She was subsequently involved in collection of moderator identities, from which she collected a mod list (don't bother, I've seen a shadow of it and it's obsolete), and for which we assume she is now perma-banned from (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways).

 

Obviously, this is a lose-lose for everyone involved, Citizenkane is perma-banned from (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways), and there was, for a while, a mod-list floating around with accurate information on moderator identities. Since Citizenkane was banned (and I believe she was quickly put on the appeal denied queue), there was no way for the moderation team to get Citizenkane to cease and desist in its assemblage or dissemination, as they had no further sanctions against her available. Same thing with collecting and exposing moderator identities via Coldfront; before, they could trust him to be confidential because they both had a good working relationship with her, and if she got out of line they could threaten to ban her or just ban her as retaliation.

 

This is an extreme case, of course, but it's illustrative of how losing retaliation power against a player can work against you. And as I've mentioned before, ban evaders, in my experience, almost always operate multis on the side. If they're successful at ban evading, they have both the capability (they are successfully evading detection by the moderation team) and the incentive (dislike / distrust of the moderation regime) to operate multis. So if a banned player becomes a ban evader, the total quantity of cheating in the game actually increases when they are banned.

 

===

 

The second problem is detection. On the level of deterrence, banning cheaters makes great sense because if cheaters are always caught, but the problem is that a hard policy on cheaters usually ends up producing a type of security theater.

 

In regards to (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways), I've been watching the game reports forum for quite some time, and generally what I see is that a "wild-type" multi-operator tends to get promptly banned. These players tend to have no idea what they are doing, and are quickly picked up and caught. It fills up the game report forum, and gives players the impression that the game is usually clean, but it's not, since they are not the only type of multi-operator.

 

The main problem with cheating is less wild-type multi-operators, but cheaters who are operating inside established alliances. These people typically have been around long enough, and have done the research long enough, to either have directly compromised the mod team, which is rare, or just to have a good idea of what moderation policy is, and how to evade bans for multi-operation, which is common.

 

The problem with these kinds of people is that for wild-type multi-operation, they're relatively easy to catch because there is no imagination and no creativity in what they're doing, it's brute force and primitive and they get caught. Cheaters who operate inside established alliances, on the other hand, are more creative and often they can come up with schemes that are extremely difficult to detect.

 

King Brandon, for instance, was operating multis in MK since April of 2012, when I noticed that there was this strange account with 0 posts that registered onto the MK forums. He was only caught, and only after his own laziness and carelessness, around December 2014. If he hadn't made enemies by calling out certain peoples' passed on nations, alongside an aggressive approach to other players (if this reminds you of me, I know, derp), he would have been able to do so much longer, but he had a survival time of 32 months, 2 years, 8 months. He was never banned, of course, because I don't think they were able to IP-link his multis to his main account, but afterwards he went into inactivity mode and quit the game, not least because there were multiple prices on his head, which had locked him into peace-mode beforehand.

 

I talked to someone who was... well, in the know, with regards to the (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) moderation staff, as well as mildly Garlic or was that Gallic, and two interesting comments were exchanged (he will deny this, of course). First, the reason the penalties are so harsh in the (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) moderation system is because they believe that if the probability of detection is low, maximum deterrence is achieved by making the punishments extremely high so that on the off-chance that you get caught, the penalties are high enough to deter you from acting in the first place.

 

That's utterly bollocks. First, I reference Cesare Beccaria, an Italian Enlightenment-era Jurist (see "Of Crimes and Punishment) who was considered one of the first utilitarians (an ethical philosophy which believes in the greatest good for the greatest number). Punishments, according to him, have their maximum deterrent effect not when they are strong, but when they are swift and certain. To illustrate why that's true, I had a recent discourse with a contact (someone who has a degree in political science, of all people), who after being told how things were being designed, remarked that that wouldn't work because most people are extremely bad when it comes to calculating risk. When the risk of being caught is so minute, they fail to consider the aftereffects of what they consider an impossibility, so there is essentially no deterrent effect.

 

In my own view, as an aside, getting away with it, and I'll cover it later on when I discuss my attitudes towards cheating, is worse than not getting away with it and getting a slap on the wrist. It convinces everyone that the system doesn't work, which can be used as an excuse to cheat, as well as giving people the idea that detection is rare, so that if they cheat, they'll be able to get away with it, compromising further the deterrence effect of heavy punishment.

 

I think I had mentioned something to that effect about how defective the moderation regime was, to someone in the know, and their choice of response was ultimately to upgrade the penalty for not reporting bannable cheating to bannings, from deletion. That was... ultimately pointless, because it is extremely hard to prove that someone knew about a given act of cheating, first, second, it gives further incentives to cheaters to conceal their cheating to prevent the act of contagion, and third, it creates the possibility of multi-bombs, for example, the Grinch affair, where a banned ex-MK member created an incident by deliberately ban evading, then moving into a public channel and panicking the players by telling them that if they didn't report him, they'd get banned for not reporting him. The end result was that they spammed the moderation forum, after which multiple players were deleted, and while Admin eventually restored most of the players, this basically made a mess out of the collective punishment policy.

 

The other issue with banning cheaters and the detection problem is that harsh penalties create a culture of cheating, where the people most in the know about cheating are unlikely to report the cheaters because first, they don't want to get their friends deleted or banned, and because they do not want to be associated with the stigma of being a snitch. You can go on and claim that they have a duty to report cheating, but honestly, if you look at alliance sociology a working, strong, alliance is an alliance that is willing to go "friends > infra" and be rolled / ZIed for each other. Any other alliance type will ultimately end up being destroyed in inter-alliance competition. By extension, a good alliance that can embrace a "friends > infra" ethos often becomes an alliance that can embrace a "friends > account" ethos, and cover up for each other's cheating. The end result is that the only alliances that can be typically counted on to be "clean", are the alliances that have the worst esprit de corps, and I also note that while esprit de corps is a positive in English, in French it refers to a sickly group affiliation, like cops who cover up for each other's misdeeds.

 

Second, reporting people can end careers. I will admit that I was privy to a certain impropriety in Round 15 of Cyber Nations: Tournament Edition, to which I was holding onto as security against certain events. When a certain player opted to rogue a certain other player, I responded by dumping logs, of course, which were not sufficient to prove the impropriety and ultimately got me nothing more than a boot from my own alliance channel at the time. I actually got off easy, there is a certain other someone, who was senior government in their alliance at the time, and that they were pinned by their government as a mod, as well as the one who was likely to have gotten their alliance government alternately banned and deleted. That person ultimately fled to a different alliance, briefly became government, but their career essentially was over at that point. I would say that that, as an example, is a strong deterrent to reporting your friends.

 

The worst part of all of this, is that as I've previously stated, the best way to catch established cheaters is through an inside job. The people in the best position to catch cheating are the friends of cheaters, because they are often the ones who are given confidence of what's going on. By giving these people strong disincentive to report cheating, the end result is the formation of a cheating culture, something I've previously referred to as Omerta, after the code of silence among Sicilian mobsters, which makes it far harder to detect and control cheating.

 

This brings us, of course, to the other comment of Herr Garlic, which is that it is a closely held secret in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) that there is a rampant cheating problem, to which my own estimate runs between 5-10% of the population as multis, given the population of players with the incentives and the capabilities.

 

===

 

The third problem is the ease of punishment, or the willingness to enforce rules and regulations. The best example was a recent article in the Financial Times I had read on Indian regulatory reform, where the outcome was that despite having strict and heavy punishments for white collar crime, judges (I don't think they use jury trials there) have used a high burden of proof before imposing actual punishments, resulting in a low rate of actual punishment.

 

In (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways), for instance, I bring up DBDC because the problem with them is that Kevin Marks has four ways of punishing possible DBDC cheating. He can either warn them, delete the multis, delete the players, or ban the players. The problem here is that the first two punishments are too light (slap on the wrist), and the second two punishments are too harsh, independent of what I have said about the problems with banning cheaters (a macrodonor is not a standard donor, a standard donor donates around $30 a month, a macrodonor donates around $180 a month. Given cashflows in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) as of last check, a macrodonor can make up more than 1% of (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways)'s total revenues).

 

I have been told about the beginnings of a culture of Omerta in PnW. Let's say that, first, PnW continues to grow, and the culture of Omerta continues to grow with it. What happens if you end up with a situation where half the VIP donors have multis or some other innovative cheating scheme (what applies to (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) does not apply necessarily to PnW) operating in the basement? Are you seriously going to expect Sheepy to ban half his donorbase and thus cut funding for servers and development in half?

 

Basically, a system of severe punishment is worthless as Beccaria says, because if you can only apply them rarely, instead of constantly and consistently, you lose all deterrent effect, and what's more, you make people lose all respect for the legal system.

 

===

 

As alternatives go, let me suggest something that is more utilitarian. To solve Marks' problem with DBDC, there are many punishments below both the deletion and banning level that can be used to achieve effective deterrence as well as eliminate cheating. Suspension is one, the other can be slots blockage, the third can be removal of tech in a way that guarantees that illegally obtained advantage is not worth the time.

 

In a (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) context, this is something that is both easier to enforce and apply, because if improperly imposed, there is less whinging, reducing your burden of proof, as well as still being sufficient to deter players from resorting to cheating to obtain an advantage.

 

What you want is a type of punishment that is both sufficient to deter offenses, as well as not being so severe that players will not accept punishments as legitimate, so that players will not use their diplomatic footprint to call up a fracas or be disinclined from reporting their friends, because the punishment is both appropriate and relatively lenient.

 

In a PnW context, this would mean that penalties for cheating, then, should be reduction (reduction of stats), admin-imposed blockades, pillorying (locking a player's vac mode and encouraging players to attack that player, with possible suspension of that player's account to prevent fighting back), and suspension. I think for instance, the penalty that was applied to Ford should more accurately be applied to Pol Pot, but I will address Pol Pot and Ford at the very end.

 

===

 

I think Malone mentioned that he would be delighted to see, in a most sardonic and rubbernecking way, what a game I was running would look like, because I don't think it's correct to ban cheaters, or immediately move to ban cheaters. Surprise surprise, a game with that sort of policy already exists.

 

It's called OGame. Check out their Pillory system, which lists all suspensions and bans applied to players since, well, 2008? 2003? They've been up for more than a decade, actually. If you note what happens there, multis are not banned immediately, and even pushing (an economic crime forbidden by the game rules) is not banned immediately. For the first offense, a suspension of up to a month occurs, depending on the details, and permanent bans are in fact imposed as a punishment for repeat offenses. For minor offenses, players are suspended and asked to speak to Game Operators before being let through, and this type of discourse actually improves compliance with game rules and policy.

 

I do note that OGame, first, seems to only have picked up a more lenient system in its decline; it is an old, and dying game, and besides that, it is inherently a time intensive game that benefits multi-operators far less than players in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) would, where the game is designed to require less than 30 minutes a day.

 

On the other hand, from what I've seen on an admittedly cursory level, cheating is relatively rare in that game. I did run an attempt to catch prizes given by OGame's European headquarters, with a medium-sized alliance of 20 people or so, and the temporary server there was heavily-covered with cheating offenses, but I only know that because the Pillory lighted up with "pushing, disqualified from the game" offenses when the server was closed. That is, I admit, relatively flawed, but at the same time, for people who know about my "Secret History of Tournament Edition" thread, is far better than all the people who've managed to commit improprieties and get away with it in Cyber Nations: Tournament Edition.

 

One reason to consider that model, as opposed to the Cyber Nations "Strike Hard" model, which I've stated has already been shown to be a failure, is because OGame is run and operated by a company, that before it was bought out and taken private, was worth 75 million USD (I forget, it might have been EUR). Cyber Nations, with which many people are more acquainted with, was a game, that at last check, was collecting 5 digit revenues in 2013, and I had valued the game at between $300,000 to $600,000.

 

One is significantly a greater model of professionalism, the other is a one-man operation with unpaid moderators, excepting perhaps Sword of Estel, who now no longer does any work, being more involved with her PETA job.

 

===

 

Next to next to last, let me talk about philosophy of jurisprudence and what values underline my beliefs.

 

First, I think that banning should only be appropriate in two circumstances. The first is when someone with banning rights threatens a player with it, that if they don't do X, they will be banned, or if they do Y, they will be banned, and the player calls their bluff. Administrative credibility is paramount, and sometimes there are circumstances where harsh penalties can be called for in order to establish and maintain control.

 

Second, the other circumstance is more ambiguous, and perhaps it would be what would not be considered fair. The only other criteria for player banning, and I assume this should be a permanent ban, is whether or not a certain player annoys the moderation team. I don't mean this in the Kastor sense, or if you'd like to think that way, the Inst sense, but I think that if a player constantly forces the moderation staff to spend time on them, devising a punishment, reverting their exploits, or trying to talk sense into them, the moderation staff is free to clear themselves of their responsibility by simply getting rid of the player. That player, of course, is free to ban evade, but the moderation staff, after all, has spent considerable time trying to make that player reasonable, and if that player has shown a repeated and uncorrectable tendency towards cheating or otherwise being offensive, banning them for it will free the moderation to deal with other players, as well not significantly increasing the level of cheating involved, because they've shown they're going to do it anyways. (I will note, for that, that Pol Pot applies under this rubric, because he obviously put Sheepy underneath the duty of spending more than 8 hours removing his ill-gotten gains from the game, and threatening the player base with the possibility of a reset, giving Sheepy a significant headache.)

 

The advantage of being defined as "annoying the mods is bannable" is that it's not formal and predictable. Players, in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways), for instance, have spent considerable amounts of time gaming the forum warn system, for instance. If you have a low warn level, you can behave atrociously until you get a high-warn level, after which you behave normally, then grovel for a warn level reduction. It's gotten to the state where someone I was told was a moderator said that "the only reason you get forum banned is because you're too stupid to game the warn system". By being unpredictable, there's a greater level of deterrence involved because you never quite know how close you are to the point where the mods have decided they're fed up with you, and you're going to get banned.

 

The counterargument to that, however, is that the unpredictability is inherently a bad thing. As stated above, with regards to the problems regarding low-detection of cheating in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways), people have a bad inherent sense of risk control and tolerance, and many people, when they don't mean to, will end up crossing the line. They will then perceive this as unfair, and take it as an excuse to ban evade, or take it as an excuse to not report cheaters. I'm not sure about it, but in either case the theoretical justification of annoying the mods is valid, the question is whether or not it should be a formal 3-strikes you're out system (a la OGame), or whether it should be handled informally to prevent gaming.

 

Besides that, in general, I usually do not have a big problem with cheaters. I can understand why they make the decisions they do (for instance, their alliance tech system is deeply broken, so there is no other way for them to get tech, or for instance, they cannot accept defeat in a TE flag run, so they resort to slot filling in order to make good on their effort and stress; for instance, and this was a guy who was clean, I know about how a certain Pork Shrimp government member was smoking 2 packs a day towards the end of the flag run in order to deal with the stress in Round 9, for which they were ultimately successful. I myself ended up smoking 2-3 packs a day towards the end of my TE career, and the only way I could fall asleep often was by resorting to strong liquor, after which I obtained a drinking habit), and while I deplore their cheater, I think I can understand them. More problematic for me is cheating in itself, and even more problematic is cheating that is not detected in a timely fashion by the moderation system.

 

Cheating, after all, impacts game systems and makes them unstable. You end up with weird and undeserved results, and it makes gameplay degenerate, because, for instance, if cheating is the norm and is commonly accepted, a given game can be a contest to find the most effective methods of cheating and make all the challenge of the game the art of cheating, which oftentimes is quite ugly. In TE, for instance, there were multiple slot-fillers who finished the round. If slot-filling were considered normal, then the art of the flag run, instead, should be getting groups of friends to work together to slot-fill and block other players from being able to attack your nations. That is significantly less dynamic, significantly ugly, and ridiculous. In Cyber Nations, the problem with cheating is that cheating inordinately favors elite alliances at the expense of mass alliances. Elite alliances, normally speaking, are supposed to partner with mass alliances in order to fulfill their tech needs, but if they operate multi schemes instead, they can avoid putting money into the hands of new players and encouraging new players to grow and stay, while giving them an increasingly outsize advantage over mass alliances, who, if healthy, are usually clean.

 

And undetected cheating is even worse than normal cheating. Normal cheating, you know it's there, you can choose to legislate a specific punishment for it, and there are ways to handle it. Undetected cheating, on the other hand, is beyond the reach of a jurisprudence system, because it is being covered up by Omerta so that you don't even know it exists. For a game, cheating is necessarily going to happen because players play to win, and especially if the level of competition and pressure is intense, players will stoop to operating multi-rings or find some other way to circumvent the rules. However, it's better to have a system with many detected cheaters receiving relatively light punishment, and few undetected cheaters, because in the opposite system, with few heavily-punished detected cheaters and very many undetected cheaters getting away scot-free, the culture of cheating is continuously eroding your control of the game, whereas in the former case, you can always choose to increase the level of punishment temporarily or permanently in order to deal with the cheating climate.

 

The other aspect of the following is that I am a Daoist in many circumstances. I think that every attempt at implementing control will have unintended pushback effects, as seen with what had happened in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways). There, strike hard attempts ultimately ended up achieving pushback, to the point where there's rampant cheating, where there's compromise of moderation staff, and I have rumors that certain (ex) moderators were operating multis back in the day.

 

Ultimately, achieving a high level of control in an online game is good, because then you can decide policy that is beneficial to the game, as well as being able to implement such policy. However, doing so simply by trying to enshrine a culture of fear will result in unintended and unwanted results, with rampant hypocrisy (Inst: You know just as well that no one with a 3-digit IQ would ever admit to cheating to anyone, especially outsiders. Interlocutor: Definitely.) involved.

 

By using a holistic system of control, with less emphasis on the punishment portion, and more emphasis on the detection, incentivization, and deterrence, you can achieve a much greater degree of control than simply by waving the ban stick around at cheaters you'll never actually manage to hit.

 

===

 

Second-to-last, let's talk Pol Pot and Ford. First, my relationship with Pol Pot is as follows. I suspect Pol Pot of being Comrade Trotsky, who was formerly FA in Mushroom Kingdom and I believe should be government once again in Int, although I haven't been keeping up with (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) affairs. This man was previously a colleague and subordinate during one of my TE runs, and while he was competent, I mainly remember him for never being available when I had to call him up for nuking, and giving me a massive headache.

 

I read his posting recently to get an idea of who he was, and while initially I was certain that Comrade Trotsky would never be so stupid as to post that way, I was later told he was RP-ing, which would raise the possibility. As an foreign affairs specialist, he would be less likely to be the type to effectively operate exploits, but if I recall, he was also a computer science student, so he would have picked up the technical expertise (WHILE AVOIDING MY TE FLAG RUN AND REFUSING TO NUKE) to orchestrate the necessary operations.

 

We are estranged, as I am estranged from MK, because of my issues with a certain MK girl, and I have no intention to cease this status (I got fed up with the average level of sociopathy, as well as the relative lack of real world achievement in MK), but I would have some kind of emotional affinity for Pol Pot if he were actually Trotsky.

 

However, let's talk Pol Pot. The reason I am against banning him for exploits is because first, I don't think it was clear on the TOS and Game Rules that exploiting was bannable, and second, Pol Pot, from his posting, has shown more than decent technical expertise, meaning that he's the type of person I'd rather want on my side instead of someone I'd rather work against. Besides that, while PnW is out of beta, when you're in beta, it's actually desirable for players to aggressively move to exploit the game, because while either they or the game will be reset or reverted, the aggressive detection of exploits means that the exploit is discovered now, instead of later, when the player base is larger and there are more players incentivized to destroy the game, whether through a short-term infinite money exploit or careful long-term titration to avoid detection.

 

However, on the other hand, if the multis that were recently banned were his, on top of merely exploiting once, he's been aiming to utilize multis in the past, as well as ultimately ban-evading, which means that he's achieved three infractions in a short amount of time. While I'd still err on the side of lenience, that is probably a good reason not to unban him, with the least possible punishment, in my view, being a suspension for at least one year, with the next punishment being a ban or perma-ban.

 

Ford, on the other hand, is a different story. I am very careful about the idea of collective punishment, the idea that if you don't report someone's cheating, you are just as responsible as they are. After all, I have mentioned the problems with Grinch, and the general unenforceability of not reporting a known exploit. As far as what Ford did, well, according to other people on this thread, he was playing only 4 days. And obviously, the moment his alliance had found out, his alliance opted to report him (their mistake was not pushing Ford to get involved and report the exploit himself), and without that Pol Pot's issue would not have been so easily exposed.

 

Regarding the 4 day issue, it is perfectly possible he had no clue what he was doing, and while others have said their first instinct would have been to report the exploit, I think it would have been perfectly understandable for Ford not to want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, because how often do people all of a sudden receive a massive payment on overpriced Uranium they placed to skim the market?

 

That's not to say, that first, I would not favor having reverted Ford to his initial state, before Pol Pot had bought his resources, or possibly giving Ford a warning to remind him that he should report possible exploits in the future, or that since it's been more than a week since the incident it is probably way too much work to revert Ford when there are other pressing moderator issues at hand.

 

===

 

Finally, while this would have otherwise been first as a way to bash Fox Fire for never having quite achieved anything despite having claimed to have been in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) since 2006, I would like to submit my gaming resume to your satisfaction.

 

 

2007:

 

War Games 2.0. Fought the #1 alliance by score almost by myself, cleverly employing mechanics that meant that a single player, with combined stacking multiplers, became far more effective than a dispersed alliance. Ended the game in the #1 place, with an effective stalemate with the #1 alliance.

 

2009:

 

Cyber Nations. One of the first players to establish a comprehensive spy database for enemy alliances during the Karma War against TPF, allowing us to effectively map the warchests and fighting capabilities of every major nation in TPF.

 

De facto Baron of Tech and chief tech buyer during much of the run-up to the Bipolar War, helping push MK to the #2 position for tech acquisition on a per capita level, behind only Umbrella, and if we were #3, Gremlins.

 

2009/2010:

 

Won MK's first flag in Cyber Nations TE, back when it was actually difficult to get, as a solo runner without strong alliance support, in part by talking rival runners into targeting each other by exposing their warchest information and giving them targets.

 

Helped keep TOP staggered during Bipolar, with only 2-3 escapes before the last 2 weeks of the war, possibly contributing to TOP's decision to surrender when their warchests were quite capable of pushing the CnG coalition to White Peace.

 

2010:

 

Won Umbrella's flag in Cyber Nations TE, using a novel stealth tactic involving nations that seemed inviable.

 

Silicon Dawn. Destroyed 67% of the diplomatic system, creating damages that amounted to almost 3 player-months of resources, by using a novel and unexpected tactic involving defense platforms. Their admin ultimately decided to name a NPC monster after me, the "Insta".

 

2011:

 

Origins Return. Got into a dispute with the MK girl with whom I am now estranged, destroying the MK presence in the game. She ultimately moved to the NPO presence, making new friends, and the entirety of the NPO railed on me for a couple of months, until I was able to more or less catch up to that girl in score, and because she couldn't stand the psychological state of having me surpass her, she threatened to quit if that happened. The end result was that we achieved a concordance, and I left.

 

2012:

 

Stratis Imperia. When China, the Paradoxian country, was attacked by the Dutch based out of Indonesia, with a presence and build-up time exceeding ours by 2-3 times, I discovered that it would be possible to use airdrops to quickly dispatch defense forces to their landing site on Hainan Island, and we destroyed over 5 times our number in troops, despite being significantly outnumbered and having lost control of the seas.

 

Decided on and coordinated the truck rush non-combat unit campaign with which we eliminated dissidents in Turkey, comprising a full 33% of the population, in only 48 hours by using the trucks to block their unit spawning sites before they could respond, in tandem with using flaws in the diplomacy system to circumvent NAPs (the dissidents were expelled from Turkey, making them independent nations, and our strike force seceded from Turkey in order to avoid the 72 hour mandatory NAP for secessionists against their home country or for the home country against expelled players).

 

2013:

 

Successfully won a third and last flag, which is in the hands of Dem61s, in a joint victory with Sengoku, during which we had snatched victory from the hands of the dominant TPC by using rogues to sabotage any attempts they might have had towards obtaining the max destruction flag, after my failed attempt to destroy them in retaliation for rolling us at the start of the round resulted in the highest destruction war to date.

 

Retirement from online games and banning from (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways).

 

===

 

Now, if I am arrogant, I think my resume can justify some of it, if not all of it. I am also happy to talk of the shadow-side of my resume, to points where my exploits were incomplete or have been otherwise compromised.

 

To discuss:

 

War Games 2.0. There was nothing technically wrong with my victory, but I also had extended goals that were not achieved. For instance, after being initially successful against the enemy alliance, I joined the second strongest alliance and tried to promulgate my techniques to the players. There was only one player who was able to successfully pick up on the technique, and while I was able to retain the #1 spot, NPO (because that was the alliance I was fighting, and to be honest, they were distracted by the Unjust War at the time) was able to deal damage to my affiliates.

 

I had quit the subsequent round because I was sure that the organization I was involved in was not going to succeed, especially after the Admin of the game had asked for and received an understanding of how I was able to take on the NPO solo, then proceeded to patch the game to make it difficult or impossible. To my surprise, that alliance achieved more than a degree of excellence, taking the third spot, and was ultimately able to provoke the first and second alliances (of which the first was NPO), into fighting each other, resulting in them finishing the round in the first spot.

 

Beyond that, I was later informed by the NPO that in the round following the round I had left, the NPO had managed to bypass the circumventions put in by the admin against multiplier stacking, and they were able to achieve a higher historical score that I was able to. Of course I didn't really care, because I had obtained my own interesting experiences and if they had been able to build on my techniques, more power to them.

 

Cyber Nations, MK tech. The thing I am most proud of in my (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) career is the MK tech job, because that was well-executed and I would like to think that that contributed to our victory over TOP, alongside the strategic blockade against Citadel and all the other efforts of MK FAers and other MKers, who fought so bravely and hard throughout the war. However, while I was effective solo, I had effectively burnt myself out, and while I had attempted to create a department, I was not an effective leader of men, something that would haunt me repeatedly in the future. The end result was that due to my burn out, when the time came to select a Baron of Tech, the selected person was Infinite Citadel, whom, I believe, was able to push the per capita tech income to its all-time highs.

 

The TOP stagger was also problematic. While I had stepped in when the DT stagger control system broke down, I had done so without alliance authorization and there were complaints against me for a rather forward approach that was annoying our allies. The results, however, were ultimately the results. Perhaps someone else, with a lighter touch, would have stepped in, or TOP would never have obtained a second wind if staggers had been less aggressive, because TOP usually has problems with fighting spirit (as mentioned before, if TOP wanted to fight to the end they could have achieved white peace, and in the previous global war in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) TOP attempted to hide their upper tier, instead of doing the brave thing and committing to full scale warfare, something that garnered the respect of MK during Bipolar, but the absence of which only drew snickers by their assailants in the last war).

 

The first MK flag, which is being flown by Saldaea in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) right now, has issues because I was warned 20% for obtaining it. I had posted in the TE forums the relevant warchests and targeting information without listing my nation, which I had not known was necessary for posting. This is why Pork Shrimp, in their alliance history on the (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) Wikia, states that I had achieved a tainted victory, but what they don't mention is that the round before that, which TFD had won, was also tainted because their nuke rogue had deliberately slot-filled the eventual victor, supposedly because there was yet another slot-filler in front of them.

 

I was the one who had done absolutely nothing wrong then, and if that hadn't happened, I would have won, because I had successfully run a stealth strategy to what ultimately became the #2 spot. I think the fact that I had won was actually sort of a gift to me from the moderation staff, because while pro-TFD mods (I should be thankful because the NATO mod involved was thrown off the moderation team through a bit of intrigue by Zoom) had taken from me my victory, I was granted that victory, over a TFD #2, in the subsequent round.

 

The Umbrella flag, also, was complicated, because we had entered with far superior assets hidden in a variety of alliances, I had, through bad judgment and excessive stress, compromised our far superior position. While we were ultimately able to salvage my defeat, when I look over my record of decisions made and tactics employed, I think that while I am proud of sticking in there, and not walking away until the absolute end, when I had to walk back because there was no one willing and able to take over the TE force, my decisions were awful. While it was my technique that allowed Methax to secure ultimate victory, it was Natan's decision to forbid him from being deployed to rogue his opponent that allowed us to push him above Dealmaster, and that is, ultimately, to his credit, not mine.

 

Silicon Dawn. While I was able to destroy the neutral system, I was also so fatigued by the process of wrecking the neutral system, after which the admin turned off the server to collect losses and to find out what I had actually did, that I did not prepare a proper defense, for which I had the resources available.

 

Players then embarked to attack my base, after which my account was reset by player action, and I had quit the game.

 

However, if I had not taken a 48 hour break (and that, was a truly fatiguing and stressful process of going after the neutral system), I would have been well able to set up a defense so that any attempt to warp into my home system would ultimately result in either crashing the game (and while I had considered it, I had not decided on it, not only would that have risked moderator action, I had zero tests as to what would actually happen if a player tested the design flaw) by having no place to spawn, or spawning into a heavy-defensive field (by filling up the rest of the map except for a part that was exposed to defense turrets) that would result in their immediate destruction.

 

Stratis Imperia. I had also made a major misstep in Stratis Imperia, because due to a chain of incredible successes, such as the Hainan airdrop and the truck rush that allowed us to end a civil war in 48 hours, I had become overconfident. I had launched two initial forays against the Polish enemy in Italy, and both forays were either full disasters or half disasters. I think the first was an honest oversight, because we had so much industrial capability at home that we could quickly overwhelm our enemies, and the second was not a full victory, because despite having our tank forces savaged by heavier vehicles, we were able to isolate and destroy two overconfident enemy recon divisions.

 

What was completely unforgivable, though, was being talked by Khyber into trying to use terrain to reattempt to use superior numbers to destroy a heavier force. I had decided on a guerrilla campaign of hit-and-runs and misdirection to delay the enemy force, and despite retreating into the north, I ended up committing our forces to attack a heavier force in terrain that should have privileged us.

 

I shouldn't have listened to Khyber in the first place, but I was already deposed for shoddy IA work, and both of us were leaving. The second, and more substantial mistake, was that when it was obvious that it wasn't working, I kept on pushing it in, until by the time there was no choice but to withdraw, the tank forces deployed were broken, and consequently the forces involved there were shattered.

 

That was a colossal mistake. And because I had already indicated my decision to withdraw, I abandoned the field, instead of trying to put things back together, which were perfectly within my capability, but not within my mental health.

 

We won, by the way, in the end, because we recruited Polish players that had war experience (and were mildly unscrupulous), and because we had the best economic system in the game.

 

Regarding the last TE round that was ultimately a cooperative with Sengoku, I'm tired and I don't want to talk about it. After all, I mentioned our counter-attack failed, but we managed to get something out of it in the end. That they succeeded in the first place was only due to my own mistakes, and ultimately, it was due to my naivete as I had always considered them my core allies.

 

====

 

All that said, you know who I am now, what I've done, what my achievements are, and what I ultimately think on the cheating issue. You are free to make your own judgments and take the consequences, whether good or ill, of your decisions. If you, as long as you are not Fox-Fire, have a comment on what I've said, I'll gladly and, if possible, politely give you a response, but this is my peace.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Inst

[Alataq]

This is literally 7468 words. If you don't want to read it, then skip it. If you think it's too long, tl;dr is "urdum" or alternately "learn2speedread".

 

There's probably a hidden message in there about how you aren't a real player.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Alataq

[Kadin]

Nobody's going to read that crap.

[Lu Xun]

Nobody's going to read that crap.

Yes, because people make their decisions and reinforce their established belief. Since the text is deliberately long and detailed, it's targeted towards actually intelligent people, not people without the attention span to go through 7 years of game experience at medium or high levels of authority and play.

 

Contrary to your belief, I'm not a troll. If no one pays attention to what I have to say, I'm fine with that.

 

Actually, one other thing. I'd like to dedicate the 4 hours of time spent not to Fox-Fire, who successfully provoked me, but to the relevant (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) moderator who fell into bad times because his alliance suspected him of reporting them. That's the true meaning of my effort.

[Vincent]

Gosh , still deem it fit to get stuck on this? Move on...

[Neo-Nexus]

Yes, because people make their decisions and reinforce their established belief. Since the text is deliberately long and detailed, it's targeted towards actually intelligent people, not people without the attention span to go through 7 years of game experience at medium or high levels of authority and play.

 

Pretty sure the intelligent thing to do is not wasting time reading through it or writing it to begin with and just to let it go and move on.

[Lu Xun]

Now, you see here, a lot of people are telling you not to waste your time to read it, so why not do what they're telling you not to do? Since when have you let yourself to be corralled by others and followed the crowd like a bunch of lemmings? What's the worst that can happen?

 

Here, why don't you read this article in The Atlantic instead; that would be more fun.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

[Bored now Leafing]

Na gnitsertni daer tsni

[Buck Turgidson]

Since people have time on their hands, I would like to contribute something here. It's not exactly the same subject, but sometimes you can glean useful nuggets when you see how the same objective is achieved in a different arena:

 

http://www.philippeweil.com/links/BoringWriting.pdf

[Bored now Leafing]

i evah draeh fo siht tpecnoc erofeb tuoba gnikam ffuts ekil rehgih noitacude dna ecneics ni lareneg yllanoitnetni gnirob ni redro ot gnirb a niatrec morf fo digir lortnoc dna ytimrofnoc os taht ytivitaerc dluow eb detnuts os taht enoyna ohw stnaw ot nioj hcus spuorg evah ot tif ni htiw eht puorg kniht dna lliw ton eb ylekil ot etagitsni egnahc neve nehw eht noitutitsni sdeen ti os yletarepsed taht ti si gnispalloc ni no flesti.

 

Ruoy knil dednimer em fo taht tib fo aivirt.

[Buck Turgidson]

i evah draeh fo siht tpecnoc erofeb tuoba gnikam ffuts ekil rehgih noitacude dna ecneics ni lareneg yllanoitnetni gnirob ni redro ot gnirb a niatrec morf fo digir lortnoc dna ytimrofnoc os taht ytivitaerc dluow eb detnuts os taht enoyna ohw stnaw ot nioj hcus spuorg evah ot tif ni htiw eht puorg kniht dna lliw ton eb ylekil ot etagitsni egnahc neve nehw eht noitutitsni sdeen ti os yletarepsed taht ti si gnispalloc ni no flesti.

 

Ruoy knil dednimer em fo taht tib fo aivirt.

Exactly.

[Ayayay]

i evah draeh fo siht tpecnoc erofeb tuoba gnikam ffuts ekil rehgih noitacude dna ecneics ni lareneg yllanoitnetni gnirob ni redro ot gnirb a niatrec morf fo digir lortnoc dna ytimrofnoc os taht ytivitaerc dluow eb detnuts os taht enoyna ohw stnaw ot nioj hcus spuorg evah ot tif ni htiw eht puorg kniht dna lliw ton eb ylekil ot etagitsni egnahc neve nehw eht noitutitsni sdeen ti os yletarepsed taht ti si gnispalloc ni no flesti.

 

Ruoy knil dednimer em fo taht tib fo aivirt.

English or gtfo

[Alex]

This thread has run it's course.