Yekaterina

How? What tools? So far I have not been banned for making more than 1 forum accounts, and I don't want to be banned of course. I haven't done anything bad with the additional accounts. I just gave them to different people. It is even easier to make smurf forum accounts than smurf accounts in game: VPN, privacy browser (e.g. duckduckgo, TOR), tempmail. You can't even ban by hardware ID or IP address. Also, reading the forum doesn't need good connection so using a VPN is perfectly ok. Similarly, you can spam smurf accounts in discord, instagram, gmail, outlook...

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Why are we allowed to create 2 forum accounts and not 2 game accounts? Surely someone who wants trouble will create another forum account after first one is banned and there is 0 way of telling who is who

imo what makes the game unpleasant is rudeness smurf speculation increases paranoia as well -> everyone think each other is smurf and are motivated to create smurf accounts themselves or be rude to suspected smurfs. Also hosts become very unfriendly to new players. today, some people thought that I am berhudar's smurf just because I cav rushed everyone in the opposite team and normally I don't do that. This simple case shows you how much paranoia there is and people need to relax! So what if there is 1 smurf? Just play better than them! Think: when has vali or borg ever complained about smurfs? The correct play is to become a better player yourself instead of wasting effort on harassing and interrogating anyone you don't know.

You have more than 1 account but we still welcome you! I demand a clarification: smurf != second accounts. Some people have to create another account because they forgot password or their previous accout has some issues. They don't intend to smurf or troll. For example, if I create an account Yekaterina2 (for whatever reason), am I smurf? You can immediately tell who I am and I am not attempting to hide my identity. It's just that for whatever reason I can't use my previous account anymore. Similarly, we have names like: ValihrSVN Stickfish felxfelx burhudar (he has other accounts but he is not trying to hide here because he actually forgot password) christoffel-symbol1 christoffel-symbol2 .... christoffel-symbol6 (by this point he had ragequit already) StanlySweet , Stan` Hamdich vs hamdich So, do you have to ban all these as well? Most new users can't be bothered to post on the forum then wait for a few days for someone to solve their problem; the easiest way is to create another account. A smurf becomes a known player within 3 TGs so really; we don't care unless you try to troll us. But of course, not all hosts are as hospitable as I am The reason why many advanced smurfs exist in 0ad is because we are mostly very smart and tech-savvy people. We can study lobby authentication mechanisms and hence deduce ways to create new smurf accounts then bypass their checks or ban.

Kebab Sandwich Naan Bread outside, inside is your favourite kebab with lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, yoghurt sauce and maybe some chili if you are into spicy food.

Now we are in A25 and the A25 version can be downloaded here: https://github.com/Yekaterina999/millenniumad

That's up to him. Today I came back to the lobby and now I understand why people quit permanently.

So how do I fix it?

Some people have been writing poems and songs about 0ad. Here are a few examples:

Absolutely OP! This is exactly what I wanted! Thank you!! But, I can't join games now. Error: please join via the lobby

Not good enough though; custom rating mod sometimes run into bugs and people still see your username in front of the customrating. I would like it such that you have to search my player profile to see my real name. Or, we can have a token as lion said.

It's very easy to figure out given the group chat, location ping etc Also people talk to each other on discord (which has an outage right now, but they use mumble instead)

Yes... some people in the lobby has been saying: 'just rush her and you will win' There is some element of truth in that, but, I can defend against a single rush like everyone else, but I can't stand a double rush or triple rush! I don't think you can, neither! Also in 1v1s if I get no hunt then I am quite dead, because any non-cosmic player would go all in on cav and rush me. Now, quite a few players have suicided to me this way, but others who got more hunt than me could beat me with camels. You can't really defend against javelin cavs or camels unless you have your own cav, but no hunt = no cav

The only 2 reasons why I want to use another account: 1. cool name 2. not get double rushed

That is exactly what I am talking about. Considering the player base of 0ad and each character takes up 1 byte only, I think it is affordable... Please teach me!! I am willing to do it but now sure how!

Yes. And certain people try to prove we are the same person xD. There was 1 guy who proved that I am hamdich and I cound't argue against him xD Totally agreed

Very good idea indeed. PUBG and Discord does this

I am not trying to hide anything all I want is a new nickname! Yekaterina is not even my real name nor did I invent the name myself, and I've had enough of it! Maybe we can disallow changing your nickname to already taken options. If someone choses to be Kate then there can't be a second Kate. But Kate- is allowed and u can see that it's not the same person (otherwise why add a - after your name)

@Player of 0AD I know you hate smurfs the most. Tell me, what do you think about this proposal? Just change the nickname but the fixed name stays constant so you still know who I am and my skill level, meanwhile I can enjoy the fun of funny nicks. So I think this is a good middleground compromise for the two types of people. Think: you can join mumble servers with whatever weird name you want... so why not 0ad?

@Stan` @user1 @Lion.Kanzen @smiley @Dizaka I have an OP idea that will lead us out of this argument: Each account gets 2 names: a 'player name' and a 'fixed name'. Similar to most social media. The 'player name' can be changed to whatever they want - so no need to create new accounts just because they are bored with their old nickname The 'fixed name' can only be set once, when the account was being created. So, you can still easily identify who is who. Obviously people won't use their real life names but it is an effective way to reduce smurfs. This is my instagram account, just to illustrate the idea: The fixed name in this case is yekaterina2.71828, and the nickname (player name) is Kate, which I can change. Ratings don't change, of course. Sometimes people just want to get a funny nickname for a bit then change it, and I don't see an issue with this. For example, if you want to play ptols then you can name yourself Ptololo, then the next game you want to try Macedon and you call yourself Macedonians.

Actually I found a solution to the problem: set 10 minutes ceasefire, so that extra strength in 1 hero is insignificant with the presence of so many other units.

In my honest opinion these 4 things are not really the same: Toxicity and harassment are social misconducts, which do deserve a perma ban, even if done on main account. DDOS is a malicious technical attack that is possibly illegal, so it's not as simple as a ban can solve... Smurfing with the intention of destroying balance is also annoying and deserve a caution then a ban. Someone just turning up with a different name, then talks politely and is honest about their skills and never messed up anyone's TG shouldn't be treated the same as the 4 listed above. My point being, being respectful has absolutely no relationship with the number of accounts someone has. A rude person will be rude on their main account, and a nice person will still be nice on their 20th account... People don't automatically become disrespectful because they clicked on the 'create new account' button twice! Toxicity, harassment and DDOS is not caused by second account; JC harassed you on his main account... there are some people who are more toxic on their main account than someone on his 20th account... The DDOSer might have never been in the lobby and just attacks by monitoring traffic xD So you need to get rid of the individuals who are causing problems instead of wasting time trying to ban everyone who you suspect is making more than 1 account... Note that some lobby freshers could outperform many 1500s if they had a lot of experience fighting 1vs6 petra bots or modifying AIs. These shouldn't be banned neither. Changing your 0ad username is like changing your appearance, which means nothing to everyone else. Do you really care about the DNA of the dude behind the screen? What's important to everyone is their gameplay and not their DNA sequence... Would you divorce your wife just because she changed her make up? I don't think so, but maybe you would. Even though she is still the same person that you love, you just can't stand a slight change in her appearance because of your pedantic anti-smurfing obsession.

@Player of 0AD why are you confused?

If you didn't understand what I was saying, let me give you a more vivid example: I could be the Queen of England, playing 0ad as hobby and pretending to be 18 years old instead of 90. I just creatively named myself Yekaterina, and you can't find any flaws. I could be Angela Merkel playing the game in her spare time, remember I praised her policies often and both of us know physics and maths! I could be Recep Tayyip Erdogan, waking up at 3am for TGs then start dealing with politics and 9am. Middle aged people don't need that much sleep. I could be an alien spy scouting out the little blue planet we found near our vast interstellar empire. I could be a 19 years old boy called berhudar creating accounts named similar to 'Catherine' (who is actually him and not me, and Catherine came before me) No matter who I am in real life, it doesn't matter in the 0ad lobby. What matters is skill level and maybe playstyle (changes over time though). So, there is no evil in changing your 0ad username. Other games do allow it. As long as we don't mess stuff up it's fine. What do you think, @user1 @Stan`?