The toxic player Issue

[Meister]

Hello there,
since there is already an ongoing discussion regarding this issue. i would like to distinguish my post from the existing ones by clarifying that it is not addressed to Geriatrix. Nor is it intended to serve as a compilation of incidents (such evidence should not be necessary anymore). My focus is on finding a way to effectively deal with the ongoing issues surrounding his conditions. My goal is not to bully anyone, but rather to look for a solution to this recurring problem, as it significantly diminishes my enjoyment of playing 0 A.D.

The creation of "smurf" accounts, while undeniably frustrating, is unfortunately a common practice in 0 A.D. Some players are known for engaging in this behavior more frequently than others (e.g., Sniper, Yeka, Geri, etc.). This practice disrupts gameplay by undermining team balance, excessively targeting one player instead of supporting the team, pausing or rage-quitting mid-game, and, overall, detracting from the gaming experience. Personally, these actions greatly reduce my enjoyment of the game.

Additionally, Geriatrix appears to have a peculiar dynamic with some of us for no discernible reason. While some might suggest simply ignoring this behavior, it is more challenging for certain players, including myself. Geriatrix frequently hosts what are referred to as "OP games" and excludes me and others from participating. As a result, I am less able to engage in community interactions, as he creates a hermetic space for his friends. I am always banned from these games, both as a spectator and as a player.

I have often sought to approach him with kindness and a spirit of reconciliation, yet I find myself time and again the target of hostility.

It seems that, despite the moderators being aware of the issue and committed to addressing it, they are ultimately unable to take effective action to prevent this behavior.

I have two key questions:

1. Why do players continue to join games hosted by his fake accounts? Are they aware these accounts belong to him?
2. How can this issue be effectively addressed? Should there be stricter measures to prevent such behavior? Would making it more difficult to create new accounts be a viable solution?

I appreciate any advice or insights you can offer.

Thank you,
Meister

[Dunedan]

4 minutes ago, Meister said:

How can this issue be effectively addressed?

What does help us for moderation are reports of violations of the terms of use, like using duplicate accounts, to one of the moderators or me via private message (best here in the forums), with screenshots/logs attached. While we catch some of them without reports as well, we're never going to be able to catch all of them, if the community doesn't support this effort.

If you encounter a toxic player, please also don't encourage them to continue to do so, by further participating in games they're also participating in. You can also consider applying that to unknown players as well and only play with players somebody else vouches for.

As @Meister proposed, please keep this thread free of personal accusations and focused on the overall issue.

[Meister]

The moment i can report someone is the moment AFTER a game is ruined. Then i report, you remove account. But making new account takes max. 30 seconds.
This is the issue im talking about.

[0 calories]

@MeisterHost of the game can make own rules & policies and can even ban anyone without noticing.. upto this part all is ok no matter who host.

What is not good is "new" smurfs account with ability to immediatly host new game. Other players gladly will join without caring much who is the host as there is in general not much games hosted at peak time.

I would like to offer devs team to implement some "smart logic" whoch would not allow host game from lobby for these "fresh accounts" and maybe additional conditions to make it harder you define...

 

I don't have single proof mentioned person is Geriatrix (probably very first account was Cedric_O)  but In general I never been banned by anyone else than him... if it helps..

 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I think with https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7047 , he will at least be less able to hold hosts hostage by threatening to leave if a spec he doesn't like isn't banned.

[Atrik]

1 hour ago, 0 calories said:

I would like to offer devs team to implement some "smart logic" whoch would not allow host game from lobby for these "fresh accounts" and maybe additional conditions to make it harder you define...

Already having a restriction on ip creating acc is kinda weird, there are plenty of situations where multiple people with same ip would create a 0ad lobby acc simultaneously. I don't think smurfs are a problem (right now) to the point to do more weird stuff degrading normal players experience.

[ShadowOfHassen]

Random idea that might not be possible. Could we somehow link the gitea 0 A.D. forum account and lobby? At the very least, making the online lobby harder to create smurfs would be useful. I don't know how though.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

2 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Random idea that might not be possible. Could we somehow link the gitea 0 A.D. forum account and lobby? At the very least, making the online lobby harder to create smurfs would be useful. I don't know how though.

well we want to make spamming accounts more difficult, but not at the expense of first time account creators. Having to register an account here to play multiplayer would probably stop lots of ppl from trying multiplayer.

[ShadowOfHassen]

20 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

well we want to make spamming accounts more difficult, but not at the expense of first time account creators. Having to register an account here to play multiplayer would probably stop lots of ppl from trying multiplayer.

Hmmm--- This might require some brainstorming. There's probably another topic for that, but another idea is the game Team Fortress has a kind of premium mode where you get better stuff if you buy a skin or something (Or soI've heard. Again I play very little online) could we do something like that except instead of paying require a forum link of some kind? You can give it a whirl, but you only get special features if you're verified.

I don't know what the features would be, but it'd need to incentivize normal people creating a forum account. Another idea is requiring an email for the lobby, just to make it a little harder. I think the cool open source game Veloren was having some problems with bots recently, and that might've fixed it. (Bots are different from smurfs, but it's a little bit of an extra step) We could also talk to administrators for Minetest Servers and other open source games to see what they do.

If a lot of them have the same problems, maybe we could pool our the brightest minds, and they could come up with some kind of open source method to help mitigate/ remove the problem.

I think the ultimate solution is if we had a TON of players, then if there's one or two bad eggs nobody would notice.

Edited December 18 by ShadowOfHassen

[strat0spheric]

(just to throw a brainstorming thought in here without knowing if this is possible or feasible)

create hardware hashkey linked with password hash upon registration? if hardware hash already registered with different login... no hosting or no new account can be created.  But this is probably problematic for new installations on new machines and of course only doable if full privacy is guaranteed.

 

Edited December 17 by strat0spheric

[leopard]

The problem is that people tend to whitewash the behavior of players like Geriatrix because he plays very well, while ignoring or harassing people like me.

This issue has an easy fix: well-regarded players in the community need to take a stand against individuals who cause trouble. I’m referring to respected players like @Player of 0AD, @Havran, @Aslan , and @MarcusAureliu#s, who are equally admired by both sides.

Unfortunately, they don’t take that stand. Instead, they often form alliances with Geriatrix in one way or another and attempt to demean or discredit moderators who are genuinely trying to help.

For instance, @Norse_Harold put in significant effort to resolve the situation in a way that avoided harming either side, yet his efforts were met with a campaign to mock him. If I were to echo the same complaints that Geriatrix sings against moderators and developers of the community mod, I would be seen as a “good person” in Geriatrix's eyes—just like the "well-respected players" mentioned here.

But I choose to stand on the side of truth and justice, even if that makes me a bad person in your eyes.

I've almost stopped complaining about Geriatrix because the attitude of many so-called OP players toward me made me question whether I am the problem here. However, I can see now that I am not the only one affected.

[leopard]

14 hours ago, Dunedan said:

What does help us for moderation are reports of violations of the terms of use, like using duplicate accounts, to one of the moderators or me via private message (best here in the forums), with screenshots/logs attached. While we catch some of them without reports as well, we're never going to be able to catch all of them, if the community doesn't support this effort.

It would help you could look beyond the duplicate accounts and contact the real person behind the action and may be talk to him or arrange a counselling or medical attention for him.
 

Edited December 17 by leopard

[Dunedan]

This is a gentle reminder that this thread is to discuss the overall issue and not issues with individual players.

[leopard]

42 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

This is a gentle reminder that this thread is to discuss the overall issue and not issues with individual players.

maybe we will have to change the title then "The Geriatrix Issue"

[Dunedan]

Fair point. I took the liberty to rename the thread to "The toxic player Issue".

[leopard]

15 hours ago, Meister said:

The creation of "smurf" accounts, while undeniably frustrating, is unfortunately a common practice in 0 A.D.

This is not a big deal, it is a big deal only if someone use it as weapon. you all know who it is maybe I should not mention his name here.

[Meister]

Yes it is a big deal, since as i mentioned before there is other players like Sniper (and also Decger and others) that continue to bomb games by joining, pretending to be nub, having good boom and killing the game with 50 champs.


 

1 hour ago, leopard said:

The problem is that people tend to whitewash the behavior of players like Geriatrix because he plays very well, while ignoring or harassing people like me.

This is something very frustrating indeed. However, it reflects a broader reality in society: those who are not directly affected often choose to look the other way. I’ve had similar discussions with my friends who play 0 A.D., and I’ve even faced criticism for raising the issue or for giving it too much attention. But since the individuals are online in lobby almost every time i am, i think it is worth and necessary discussing.

Just yesterday, I asked @Atrik why he continues to play with Geriatrix. His response was, "I don’t hate him." (To be clear, I am by no means suggesting that Atrik—or anyone—should harbor hatred.)

Nevertheless, looking away or ignoring such behavior reflects a failure to exercise the normative control that a community should provide. One might even invoke Popper's Paradox here.

 

[leopard]

1 hour ago, Meister said:

Just yesterday, I asked @Atrik why he continues to play with Geriatrix. His response was, "I don’t hate him." (To be clear, I am by no means suggesting that Atrik—or anyone—should harbor hatred.)

Nevertheless, looking away or ignoring such behavior reflects a failure to exercise the normative control that a community should provide. One might even invoke Popper's Paradox here.

well said

[leopard]

This is exactly what happens to me, people ignore me because Geriatrix only selectively target people he dislike and people like us don't want to insult others too, so they think they are different and immune, when they see me in trouble they have tendency to ignore the affected person and pretend there is no problem and some people go beyond that they even mock me for having a problem 
there are big examples and big names but I don't want to fight everyone in the gaming community. so silently suffering, if the community was big like we are playing 10 20 TGs a day we can ignore people and don't join their games but right now to get a challenging game we need these people, I am considering moving to other games like 
AOE2 and AOE4 and learning it slowly, but I like 0AD more because it's build by people without big corporate money.

[Emacz]

6 hours ago, leopard said:

This is exactly what happens to me, people ignore me because Geriatrix only selectively target people he dislike and people like us don't want to insult others too, so they think they are different and immune, when they see me in trouble they have tendency to ignore the affected person and pretend there is no problem and some people go beyond that they even mock me for having a problem 
there are big examples and big names but I don't want to fight everyone in the gaming community. so silently suffering, if the community was big like we are playing 10 20 TGs a day we can ignore people and don't join their games but right now to get a challenging game we need these people, I am considering moving to other games like 
AOE2 and AOE4 and learning it slowly, but I like 0AD more because it's build by people without big corporate money.

historical mod, i dont think geratrix is there yet  its mostly only played by small group of known players.. I have more thoughts on this topic in general and will add later if i remember.

[leopard]

7 hours ago, Emacz said:

historical mod, i dont think geratrix is there yet  its mostly only played by small group of known players.. I have more thoughts on this topic in general and will add later if i remember.

then I will have to play 1v1s which is in fact bit hard for me also I have to spend time reading the changes,
I enjoy being an eco bot in TGs... and also geriatrix is a bit careful nowadays, kind of stealthy because @Dunedan is involved. so I am able to peacefully play 0AD now.

Edited December 18 by leopard

[TheCJ]

@Dunedan doing gods work 

Glad you're having more fun atm @leopard! You should still keep the historical mod in mind, we played some 3v3s yesterday 

They solution to toxic players is as simple as it is impossible; Everyone needs to act decent. If someone is toxic, get evidence and report him. If you think someone is smurfing, inform your fellow players. If someone admits to making duplicate accounts, or admits hes playing on a second account right now, get evidence and report him.

If you're hosting a game and an unknown account without rating joins, ask them how well they play (There are some reasons why someone might have more experience than an absent rating would suggest). If you find out they lied after the first game (because of their performance), don't play with them again.

Well, I think most of what I said is pretty obvious, but I almost never have problems with smurfs or toxic players (maybe 1 out of 30 games or smt like that).

[Meister]

Hi @TheCJ, thanks for the reply.

 

2 hours ago, TheCJ said:

 If someone admits to making duplicate accounts, or admits hes playing on a second account right now, get evidence and report him.

First of all, i have never whitnessed anyone to admit playing on a smurf account, if they didnt right after joining. Also i already said it above: Reporting does actually NOTHING, except to change the smurf accounts name.

 

3 hours ago, TheCJ said:

If you're hosting a game and an unknown account without rating joins, ask them how well they play (There are some reasons why someone might have more experience than an absent rating would suggest). If you find out they lied after the first game (because of their performance), don't play with them again.

Yep it is a problem: Since there is so many smurf accounts, actual newbies have it even harder to get into TGs, and just banning no-rating-people is therefore unsatisfying. This is why i am asking community to about ways to deal with it.

[Baelish]

15 minutes ago, Meister said:

Yep it is a problem: Since there is so many smurf accounts, actual newbies have it even harder to get into TGs, and just banning no-rating-people is therefore unsatisfying. This is why i am asking community to about ways to deal with it.

In a previous thread that I started, I proposed a possible solution: an automatic multiplayer rating for 2 teams games.

 

Edited December 18 by Baelish

[TheCJ]

2 hours ago, Meister said:

First of all, i have never whitnessed anyone to admit playing on a smurf account, if they didnt right after joining.

I have, but not as a player. I was spectating a game and they were aswell, together with some other players. They were addressed by the name of their main account and held a normal conversation (i.e. they didnt react in a manner that would suggest that they are not that person), which imo would be sufficient evidence that they are indeed using a duplicate account.

2 hours ago, Meister said:

Reporting does actually NOTHING, except to change the smurf accounts name.

Well, "changing the smurf accounts name" means atleast annoying the person behind the smurf account. And if we arent just talking about a specific player, it might even be enough to show them that this behaviour is not tolerated and they might stop doing it. Of course, there will be certain people that don't care about this community and either can't realize the wrongness of their behaviour or won't change their ways regardless. 

But those are rare even among the smurfs. You can talk with most players. (e.g. you mentioned decger smurfs sometimes? I don't think he's a "lost cause" and will just keep making new accounts if we ban his duplicates...)