Reyhan

I got lucky with trinitrophenol. I didn't pick easy wins; most of the 8 games I played were against 1400-1700 players. I thought they were fair matches but many of them resigned at the first sight of my army...

Precisely Many players above a certain rating are bored or they fear imbalanced games.

... hmmm My smurfing started in July when I tried to test rated games in A25 svn. I made accounts and played rated games between each other to see if the rating bot still works. Then I logged into the real game (A24) with those accounts and people's reactions were funny, so I went along with it and uncovered many other smurfs. Then it became a funny thing to do in late A24 because everyone was bored by the OP archers and turtling meta, smurfing became a source of entertainment, and many people found it funny. This is when the family smurfs appeared In A25 as cavalry rush became OP, slightly higher rated players became the target. This is when smurf accounts became necessary. Another thing is, I still find it entertaining to create new accounts and see what people have to say.

He has been unmuted. Problem solved.

Why was he muted? Unmute him please, he said nothing wrong. people get muted or banned randomly.

Smurfing doesn't always work. Sometimes I get spotted just from my playstyle: unusually fast boom, no rush, mostly women in early game. Sometimes, people place their suspicion on FeldFeld or Metafondations before they think about me. So to smurf better, I purposely slow down my boom and make soldiers or cav in early stages, then go to 200 pop before clicking P3 (to imposter Rauls and Hamdich). I used to compomise techs to maximise unit production but now I research techs just too make myself less obvious. Impostering other players often work as well. I created this fake identity Reyhan to protect my friend from abuse in the lobby. I just claim that 'Reyhanna is my sister, don't touch her or you are dead' everywhere so that she(he) can play in peace without being targeted as a threat or being trolled. When I create a smurf account, I have learnt to be flexible and random to confuse everyone. The only bottom line is not abusing unsuspecting cosmic noobs.

I know you are a very nice person, Stan, but this is an extremely controversial topic and involves gross violation of multiple rules. Of course. We can just add more features and fix the any bad game mechanics.

It is almost completely useless right now. Too many people are unrated, too many are underrated, too many are overrated. This promotes kicking new players, which is the problem. But @Dakara has made some good points here, and has given me the following inspirations: There is already a player profile lookup function, and that allows you to document the number of games played. Now, we can add in more information, including: Date of account creation Total number of games played, including unrated and TG, and their outcomes Total time spent playing. This allows you to tell smurfs apart from genuine new players: smurfs are likely to have 100% win rate whereas a genuine new player would have a much lower win rate and more number of games before they reach the same rating. Here are examples of a real account and a smurf account: Real account: This player clearly has reached 1429 after accumulation of experience over many games, some were won some were lost. This looks like the natural progress of someone from nub to OP. Smurf account: This player has only played 8 games and won all of them. On average they won 25 points per game, which implies they have to beat very strong players (1400-1600) players every time to progress this quickly. No new player can reach 1501 without a single defeat, therefore this must be a pro player's second account, who wipes out any unsuspecting challengers in the lobby. Hints such as this can tell you who is smurf and who is genuine. If we include the team games as well then we would get an even better picture.

They did help. But enemy cav come and go faster. It is economcally unwise to keep 10 cavalry idle in my base just to protect me. If you rush the enemy, then I am totally dead. In fact, one of them did rush but a single team of 10 cav can never beat 30 cav on the move. Furthermore, they must prevent being outboomed by the boomers on the opposite team. You have a point. However, you must also remember that a TG is not a 1v1: if you rush, as long as you didn't kill everyone on the enemy team, one of them will boom up and ram your CC down at minute 14 with a full army. If all 4 of you rush, if just one enemy is ahead of you then your team is dead. It is a very risky strategy to go all rushing. The most optimal situation is 2 rushers and 2 boomers, or 1 rusher 3 boomers. My teammates were no noobs; all of them were 1400+, and they did help me by diverting some enemy cavalry away. This is not plausible if you are 1600+. Just how many 1600+ players are there, and how many of them can be online at the same time? Now, even a 2000 player can make a mistake, so there is no guarantee that having all 1600+ players in a TG will prevent you from being placed in a 3v1 if one of them tells everyone that you are an easy target. Yes, bullying is encouraged by the meta and it is very effective at winning games where a team has 1 pro and 3 weaker players. If the pro is dead then the other 3 lose morale and will be killed easily. However, from the perspective of the losing team, they had no fun because it's gg 6 minutes in, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. This is the root of most problems. And the reason for small playerbase is because of unwelcoming hosts, then it goes back to the smurfing and imbalance problems. So a viscious circle is formed. The only way out of it is to make 3v1 less viable or less effective so that there is less motivation for smurfing. This requires some changes in the game mechanic. Good suggestion.

We should start a new thread about improved rating system. However, an idea is that rating gain could be a function of the player's score. For example, rating gain = A * ln(B * score + 1) Where A and B are some constants to be determined as appropriate. This model has the advantage of no ridiculous rating gains from just one game, due to the property of logarithm (f''(x)<0). The +1 is necessary so that a player with 0 score does not get a negative infinity rating. Using this model, taking A=1 and B=1, a 9000 score player would gain 9.1 points, a 30000 score player would gain 10.3 points; a 800 score player would gain 6.9 points. You may argue that this is unfair as the 30000 score player did much better than the 800 score player. So let's consider some function that takes account of the player's individual performance and the overall performance of their team: f(player score, team average) We can deduct points if a player plays too badly with respect to their team, and reward the overperforming players. So we can have a comparing term player score / team average or, player score - team average And then we operate on the result of this comparison to give a rating change. One such model is rating gain = A * exp(B * (player score / average score of their team)) - C C is a threshold constant, which determines whether someone gains or loses points after comparing with their teammates. The advantage of this model is that a player in the losing team who played very well can still gain a lot of rating in spite of their noob teammates. Suppose a 1800 player is paired up with 3 cosmic noobs, the 1800 player can still gain quite a lot of points if he scores 20000 and the noobs score 5000 each. On the other hand, a noob player in the winning team may still lose points.

Players only gain rating if they win a stated 1v1. This is not good enough. There are extremely skilled team game players with very low ratings and 1v1 players with ridiculously high ratings that don't suit them. So rating has 0 meaning now; many 1300 players can beat 1700 players. Some frequent smurfs never had a rating above 1500 although they themselves can beat any 1900. Only rated 1v1s are counted in a player's profile, which is ridiculous. Proposed changes: Any game a player plays is counted. So when someone clicks on the player profile they can see exactly how experienced someone is. Ratings change even for team games. Remove the 'exit' button. Only leave the resign button in the interface. If the host terminates the game, then the player with the highest score gain rating.

I was Gauls... I made 7 cavalry and had infantry everywhere in my base... But 30 cavalry is too much at minute 6. They just go straight in for the farms then woodline. Yes, if I make cav from the very beginning, then I could have defended it. But, any fight with 30 enemy cav will result in huge losses, and considering that I am pocket to a weaker player threatened by someone with 200 ratings more than them, I can't afford to go full defensive on my own. I expected to be rushed since the very beginning because I know 1 of their player is a rusher, but the other one in his team just convinced them to coordinate a rush on me because he thinks I am an easy target. My teammates did help me to defend by send a few of his Cavs, and I thank them for it. But the result was he reached P3 at minute 17, at that time there were 2 rams at his cc. The ge was poorly balanced because certain players are underestimated. This rings a bell for another issue: ratings.

@Stan` I would really like you and any other moderators to be aware of these problems. I can't offer a solution for every one of them, but some can be solved by better code.

Now onto malpractice in the lobby 1. Spamming. This can vary from spamming any nonsense to profanity. Some hackers are proud of their spamming skills, and they creat sophisticated spams that can temporarily block out the lobby chat or game chat. The most notable examples are 'snow people mountain people' and 'follow the white rabbit'. The spammer may join any game and start spamming so that the player's screen is full of white patterns and they can't see the actual battle anymore. Fortunately this hacker has been inactive for a while. This made many hosts ban specs and makes it less friendly for new players who want to learn from pros. 2. Trolling the bots. Some people repeated ping the ratings bot or wfg bot. 3. Cheating. This can be done in many ways but generally it either involves quickly changing the game from rated to unrated or vice versa before starting or trying to gather enemy information not through scouting but an observer PC . Cheat codes need to be banned.

Now let's talk about DDOS. I myself don't know much about the technical side of this attack, but it seems to me that whenever more than 2 players are losing connection or the host crashes, people whine about DDOS. Then they start to point fingers at each other and accuse each other of ddos even though no such attack has ever happened; host crashes may be due to bad laptop or bad broadband, sometimes even 0AD bugs. However, the quest to pull out the ddoser has never stopped; the 'who is ddosing' argument has caused many feuds in the lobby, for absolutely nothing.

The unwelcoming hosts also explain reason 7 for smurfing. I tried to get my friend to play in TGs and he booms faster than me and will outperform everyone if left undisturbed, so every time the opposite team double rush him. Obviously he will be slow after it. Then people call him cosmic and ban him. In order to get back, he had to create smurf account and regain rating to redeem himself. Most people don't have this perseverance and they quit, which is why 0ad does not have many players.

Now let's talke about the second problem with 0AD lobby: it is very unfriendly to new players, for the following reasons: 1. Most team games only allow 'known players' to play. If someone new appears, the host will often displace them from the player slots, or kick them from the game. Sometimes the host will just immediately ban anyone who he has never see before. If a new player asks to play with them, the host will simply respond with 'I don't know you' then keep them as spec or just kick. 2. Smurfs exist and destroy new players before they get a chance to start enjoying. This is less of a problem since good players only want to play with good players. 3. Many quit without resigning. This makes many players underrated and is frustrating. Players with low ratings are never welcome in team games -> they never get a chance to meet the pros -> they can't improve. 4. Profanity. This happens everywhere. Elaborating on point 1, the reason behind the hosts' unwelcoming policy is because they are afraid of unskilled players ( called cosmic noobs) ruining their balance or decreasing the intensity of the game. This is a valid reason, and I was peer pressured into doing this as well. However from the perspective of a new player, they have waited for a decent few minutes in your game, only to be kicked out simply because the host has never seen them before. There is very little chance for new players to integrate into the 'known players' group so there is always a constant if not decreasing number of players. Sadly, the best way to improve is to play with pros in such games, so the chance of a new player becoming good is very slim since A25. This problem did not exist in A23 and I was lucky enough to become 'known' then. Right now it is always the same small group of people playing and they don't accept any new faces. For some hosts, even a player with a very high rating (1700) is kicked simply because the nub host has never seen that 1700 person before, who ironically turns out to be an old player who has joined since A17... Another reason is the host is scared of smurfs who might ruin balance. In some people's minds, new player without rating = smurf and deserve to get banned instantly. Point 3 makes it very hard to get enough points to prove yourself. In order to get recognised, a new player needs to gain at least 1400 points then prove themselves to a 'known player' who is not so stubborn. After that, he needs to join the TG with their 'known player' and the 'known player' has to recommend this new player to the host. Even then, some hosts still refuse. Once they are in the game, the specs will call the new player noob if they make a mistake, then smurf if they play well. The host might ban instantly if there is a smurf accusation. Obviously this is a toxic environment for any new players. So most new players quit soon.

From the topic, you can guess this thread will be heavy. So @Stan` please feel free to lock this thread or ban me if you don't like it. Having been undercover with 20 different accounts over the past 2 alphas, I noticed some persistent issues in the multiplayer lobby (especially TGs). First, let's talk about smurfing. It is in violation of the agreement with Wildfire games to create second accounts without permission, however, many player often spam accounts; in the most extreme cases one person controls 30 accounts and share them with other like minded players. I myself am guilty as charged when it comes to spamming accounts. Why? You may ask. Well, these are the most common motivations for smurfing: 1. They find it funny, creating accounts with joke names or trolling unsuspecting nubs. 2. They regret their old name choice and a much cooler name came to their head after some time. They want to use the cooler name instead. ( This is totally me) 3. Looking for easy wins 4. One of their accounts has been banned or muted. 5. To escape bullying or targeting. 6. To test out new strategies without losing their rating. 7. Because they embarrassed themselves and wanted to assume a new identity. I would like to elaborate on point 5. This is something that only exist in OP TGs, where 1 team has an extremely skilled player and all of the enemies are scared of him. As a solution, the 4 enemies agree to collapse all their troops onto the good player and kill him or annoy him enough to force him to ragequit. The pro player is often placed with 3 nubs for balance, so he can't get much help. The 3 remaining nubs are easy to kill so the game is won. However, from the pro player's perspective, he had no fun at all: it is a 1v4 instead of a team game. In addition, the mechanics of A25 made cavalry extremely speedy and agile, so that they can deal huge damage to the pro player and escape unharmed before the others arrive to help. Furthermore, targeting happens as well. For example, I gained a reputation of having poor defence against cavalry rushes, because I wasn't used to the new mechanics in early A25 after the boom/ turtle A24. But, my boom is very fast and I can field enough units to wipe out any single player in a battle, after the boom. Those who know this, once they play on the opposite team to me, they persuade all of their teammates to rush me at the same time. In early A25 this would have destroyed me. But now, thanks to coaching from Hamdich and berhudar, I am much better and defending myself against rushes in a 1v1. But all of this was useless when 3 players of the opposite team rushed me simultaneously today, even though I was the pocket player! Clearly one of them has convinced the other 3 to do this to me as it is very unnatural to have 3 players all going in on the opposite pocket at the same time. I don't think even the strongest players can defend against 30 cavalry in their base at minute 6 while having to sustain a reasonable boom to support their weak flank player against a much stronger enemy next to him. Surprisingly, I survived the rush today and did boom up eventually, but my flanks had resigned and mighty army of 160 units with cav and champs were crushed by 2v1. This made me write this on the forum to inform the developers and project managers that such issues exist. I am not the only victim of this; anyone above a certain rating has suffered from this before and although it is a strategy, it ruins the game and there is no fun in 4v1 at minute 6. 30 cav at minute 6 is fine in a 1v2 game because your enemy has to sacrifice their eco completely to field this many cavalry so soon, and you will have chance to defend and recover. But this does not happen for a TG. When one retreats the others can take turns to harass and you will never be left alone. Today, each of them only had 10 to 15 cavalry (not much impact on eco) but it added up to 30. The A25 alpha made it very difficult to fight outnumbered so 2v1 3v1 are almost impossible no matter how pro you are. And this is exactly why many good players started smurfing - to escape being bullied by 3v1. They even share accounts and make newbie errors on purpose to make it harder to tell who is playing behind them. I sympathize with these people even though the rules don't allow it. Points 1,2 are fairly obvious and not so malicious. Point 3 raises another alarm: the lobby is very unfriendly to new players, which is why you don't see the leaderboard change often. I will discuss this in the next post. Point 4 is quite obvious... If they don't use profanity again in their new account then fine... The reason I smurf is mainly point 2, occasionally point 5 and 6. Point 7 exists; when some players make a mistake in a TG watched by many spectators, they feel embarrassed to play with them again, but they still like the game. So their solution is to create a new smurf identity and restart their 0ad career until they can redeem themselves in front of the specs.

Arguments for showing territorial expansion: 1. Alerts you that your enemy is making an aggressive move and the expansion could be very threatening for your economy. 2. Allows you to see if you are violating enemy territory so you know where not to go. 3. You'll know when you should resign, before their rams come. Arguments against showing territorial expansion: 1. As you said, it is free information being leaked and makes expansion strategies very risky. Your enemies will also know if you are in phase 2 or phase 3 and they can take actions against you on that. Passive play inside the base is encourages, which is not fun. 2. For Seleucid and Ptolemies players, if you want mercenary units then you have to build colonies - this distorts and enlarges the shape of your territory and your enemy will know that you are spamming mercenaries so they will build a fort and towers to foil your plan. 3. Logically, you shouldn't know that your enemy has expanded unless one of your units has witnessed it. Expansions happen in P2 and P3, by then berries would have little significance. I have only seen one instance where someone collects berries near a colony, and he did it with infantry instead of women.

Cataphracts should be more effective counter against the fire cav than sword cav. To boost spear cavalry, we can give them higher speeds than sword cavalry, so that they can chase after champions fire cav. It has also come to my notice that Carthaginian mercenary sword cavalry is very strong as well, but they deserve the extra attack for their cost.

I recommend drawing a timetable.

What is this? Limit on number is also good. I think it's gg when someone had 30 of these.

Perhaps more soldier types and building types is better than worker types.

There is another solution: make this unit completely unaffordable in most games, like the will to fight tech. We can raise the cost of each champion cavalry to 300 food, 300 wood, 200 stone and 250 metal. If you want to assemble an army of 20 fire cavalry, you would need 5000 metal, 6000 food and wood as well as 4000 stone. Not many people can afford this in a team game without being an useless team mate. At this cost, they can only be trained 1 by 1, which is a lot less deadly.

I think I can produce a significant number of them in less that 17 minutes. Iberians discourage the enemy from rushing them and are also harder to push than other civilisations. The Iberian player can set up 4 stables inside their walls of behind their base and produce champions while fighting. If the champion cavalry is given to another civilisation (not Ptolemies) then this would be less of a problem.