On smurfing, ddos and malpractice in the multiplayer lobby

[alre]

wherever there is communication and social relations, there will be conflict. everything the game allows can be considered fair by some players, and unfair by others, especially if playing against someone they know already. you do not solve the grand problem of human conflict.

7 hours ago, Dizaka said:

Additionally, bc of ganking, I'd  be great if fog of war could hide terrain inflence, civ anonimity until explored, and player name could be hidden for matches.

wouldn't be even greater if there wasn't any civ with one and only OP strategy that everyone picking that civ was obviously going for?

[clavz]

Quote

Here's a drastic solution: change the lobby's code so that everyone has to sign in with their real name, residential address, phone number, social security details, and any other document pertaining to their identity, such as their driver's license, and the details of where they work. Problem solved.

 

You could easily use fake info, but many potential players would not join. Require email would be much better (even for resetting pw), together with rating for multiplayer games and masking player names in-game as suggested by Dizaka

Edited December 3, 2021 by clavz

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 02/12/2021 at 11:35 AM, Stan` said:

Do people think I am some kind of despotic person? LMAO.

The people always have that perception of authority.

In some cases it is true, in your case you are very relaxed, but pragmatic.

 

@Yekaterina

What are you doing?

It is good that you are part of the team. Not the official team with its secret forums.

But if one of those who help modders.

[Lion.Kanzen]

[Reyhan]

...

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. 

 

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

20 minutes ago, Reyhan said:

Another thing is, I still find it  entertaining to create new accounts and see what people have to say. 

Why?

[Reyhan]

11 minutes ago, m7600 said:

Well, there's not much to say. Essentially, it boils down to the following points:

1) You're breaking the rules.

2) A lot of other people are also breaking the rules.

3) The lobby is chaotic.

 

Precisely

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

[alre]

I agree the lobby is indeed chaotic. we are come to the point that I feel there are more smurfs than new players. no wonder hosts only accept known players.

By the way cav rushes were already powerful in A23 and we didn't have all these smurfs. rushes don't make smurfing anyway necessary, pretending to be worse than you are so you can boom more safely is simply not honest.

and I still don't get why you created the smurf account with 8 wins straight. was that just to make a point or was that for fun too?

[seeh]

you all have the same opinion a little more or less. I agree to 75% (or more) of every posting here without hesitation. I haven't had any problems in the last few weeks, by the way. maybe a lucky coincidence. another idea without new implementation. trusted players share trusted player (buddy list). thats maybe a most easy solution, not very good but maybe easy. and every second game you let new player in or so. at the end of your config.cfg looks like: lobby.buddies ="name1,name2....."

[Freagarach]

30 minutes ago, seeh said:

you all have the same opinion a little more or less

Not very weird with smurfs.

[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...

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Perhaps a good way to help players judge whether a player is smurf or not is a "date created" for the account. This could be found under "User Profile Lookup" thing in lobby.

[maroder]

So people seem to agree that smurfing is kinda dumb and makes it harder to balance team games, but that sometimes you just want a new account.

So how about actually enforcing the "only one account rule" everyone accepted when joining the lobby, by deleting older account from the same IP/ machine?

So every player would still be able to create new accounts, but would need to accept that every account before that (including the rating) is deleted.

[Stan`]

49 minutes ago, maroder said:

So how about actually enforcing the "only one account rule" everyone accepted when joining the lobby, by deleting older account from the same IP/ machine?

Little bros and sisters...

[maroder]

38 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Little bros and sisters.

Yeah edge case will always be there. But they could just use the same account.

[Stan`]

Not sure account sharing is any better than smurfs. Besides, they might want to play together...

[maroder]

46 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Not sure account sharing is any better than smurfs. Besides, they might want to play together...

The question is what is the ratio of multiple people playing in one household vs people using smurf accounts. From what is written in this thread I'm lead to believe that one is much rarer.

And I guess those people could be granted the right to do so (maybe they would have to prove that they can indeed play at the same time to further reduce the chance of it being smurfs). But manual approval of multiple accounts seems to me a better approach than just "allowing"/tolerating it by default.

 

[Yekaterina]

12 minutes ago, maroder said:

And I guess those people could be granted the right to do so (maybe they would have to prove that they can indeed play at the same time to further reduce the chance of it being smurfs). But manual approval of multiple accounts seems to me a better approach than just "allowing"/tolerating it by default.

 

 

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Not sure account sharing is any better than smurfs. Besides, they might want to play together..

 

meh, I have been banned from the lobby already. But, @Stan` and @user1 Please don't ban my real-life friends because they are innocent.  

 

 

 

[maroder]

45 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

meh, I have been banned from the lobby already

Well my suggestion would not lead to people being banned for using multiple accounts, only to them actually only being able to use one account.

You could ofc still being banned for other unwanted behavior.

Edited December 23, 2021 by maroder

[Yekaterina]

It looks like an IP ban because when my dad tried to log in, he was also banned...

[LetswaveaBook]

3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

It looks like an IP ban because when my dad tried to log in, he was also banned...

Your great looks didn't save you this time!

Looks like a smurf has been banned.

But honestly I also know of @gator303 having troubles logging in without apparent reason. Sadly I think he has not returned since. So maybe it is not a punishment for your smurfing actions.

[Yekaterina]

2 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Your great looks didn't save you this time!

Looks like a smurf has been banned.

I have just been unbanned but I won't smurf again because whoever banned my did an OP cleansing job of all of my previous accounts and methods to generate new accounts. I can't think of any way to get around it and I won't bother thinking. 

[Yekaterina]

@user1 @Stan` @Wendy22 lol