STOP PERSECUTING RANDOM PEOPLE! Seriously, this must stop!!!

[leopard]

There are some players who are very arrogant and make people don't want to play 0AD, we should let new player in high level games also so that they can experience the real deal, there are a lot of player who let new player play and are ok to sacrifice balance in the process also.

we need new players in 0AD so its advisable if old players let at least one or two new players in TGs with good players.

[Yekaterina]

8 minutes ago, leopard said:

are a lot of player who let new player play and are ok to sacrifice balance in the process also.

I am starting to do this. I have also noticed some newer players such as LarsVanDijk, mebewell and sneakEP hosting games which allow both noobs and OPs. It's only been a few weeks and I saw a dozen of cosmic players rising to 1300-1400 level extremely quickly (even if their number can't catch up with their skills). 

Also it's not impossible to balance 1100 players if they are willing to learn. ALL OF YOU STARTED FROM 0, DON'T FORGET THE TIME WHEN YOU WERE SMASHED BY VERY EASY AI!

10 minutes ago, leopard said:

we need new players in 0AD so its advisable if old players let at least one or two new players in TGs with good players.

 It's often the case TG hosts swap out 'unknown players' for 'known players' who joins late, which shrinks the community smaller and smaller. Even old players coming back are discarded as 'unknowns' just because many TG hosts joined late A23 or A24. If Christmas, Rollo, Arkhipov, nagasushi etc come back, they will either get kicked or accused of being a smurf... sad 

Funniest thing ever, Boudica (one of the smurf persecutors), accused nagasushi of being a smurf xD...  

 

[sarcoma]

5 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Examples: Aslan's archer cav, Hamdich's Roman swords, Hamdich's Ptol mass slinger all-in push

LOL

They copied that too. First I saw (a LONG time ago) spamming champs was boudica's old account. Merov, alekusu and others did the slinger spam. Borg did skiri squads in formation and fanatics too. Vercin's old account did mass archer cav, then liberty too. Mass camels were featured here by xfs and nigel used them a lot. Luzbel had some op  combos: skirm cav+spear shield or slingers+blackcloaks.  And many strategies they brought from other games and many get reinvented all the time.

[Yekaterina]

2 hours ago, sarcoma said:

Merov, alekusu and others did the slinger spam. Borg did skiri squads in formation and fanatics too. Vercin's old account did mass archer cav, then liberty too. Mass camels were featured here by xfs and nigel used them a lot. Luzbel had some op  combos: skirm cav+spear shield or slingers+blackcloaks

I don't know any of these players, but if you are one of these great players reading this thread, I thank you for inventing these fun strategies!

@sarcoma these players probably weren't the inventor of these strategies neither; the game goes back 25 alphas and there is no way to tell who was he first person to come up with the idea of archer cav spam. However, being able to admit who you copied it from without banning anyone from your host is basic respect. 

 

I copied the Ptol mass slinger idea from Hamdich, I don't know where he got it from but I can at least be honest that I learned it from Hamdich. He is a great 0ad teacher who raised me up from nubness (also berhudar and Marc and nagasushi). 

I can also admit that the first 5 minutes of my boom build order was inspired by Valihrant's videos, Havran and Christoffel's calculations. 

I learnt dancing from MarcAurel

 

I can give credits to people who taught me things (intentionally or unintentionally). But some people with huge ego will refuse to cite where they got the idea from, then get angry if you ask them and bans you. 

But the problem at hand is, if someone can invent these, then it's not impossible for a new player to think about these things themselves. Newton and Leibniz and some dudes in Qing dynasty invented calculus in roughly the same time period, completely independent of each other! By the logic of smurf speculators, Leibniz is Newton's smurf identity and therefore should be banned from publishing maths... 

[real_tabasco_sauce]

I don't think people can file a patent for the way they micro in 0ad 

If you watch players, you learn how to play like them. If your ego is so strong you need to think of yourself as the OG archercav rusher, then go for it.

No need to credit the original clubby rusher after ruining a TG with clubs.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

11 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Also it's not impossible to balance 1100 players if they are willing to learn.

Specs sometimes coach these players in TGs to try and balance on the fly XD.

I think the hardest ones to balance are the overrated players, owing to the demographic that plays 1v1s. It seems only new players and dedicated 1v1 players do 1v1s. Mid-tier players seem pretty uninterested in 1v1s. I think more people would be interested if there was a matchmaking option.

[Yekaterina]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I think the hardest ones to balance are the overrated players, owing to the demographic that plays 1v1s. It seems only new players and dedicated 1v1 players do 1v1s. Mid-tier players seem pretty uninterested in 1v1s. I think more people would be interested if there was a matchmaking option.

I prefer TGs with 500+ kills per person to 1v1s that end in 10 minutes after rushing with 50 kills. 

1v1s make you improve very quickly, though. 

[thephilosopher]

I prefer 1v1 personally, but the lack of players and options makes the TG more attractive. Playing 1v1 often means having to choose between either a good format that gets old after awhile (mainland map, standard settings) or someone trying to play tricks on me (e.g., by choosing a weird map that few people know how to play, by choosing weird settings that most people aren't used to, etc.).

[sarcoma]

18 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

the game goes back 25 alphas

There was no lobby before a15 (or something)

[andy5995]

On 24/02/2022 at 10:43 AM, leopard said:

we need new players in 0AD so its advisable if old players let at least one or two new players in TGs with good players.

 

I think the placement that D4303 offers would be appealing to new players.

[wang_wei]

On 25/02/2022 at 12:35 AM, sarcoma said:

LOL

They copied that too. First I saw (a LONG time ago) spamming champs was boudica's old account. Merov, alekusu and others did the slinger spam. Borg did skiri squads in formation and fanatics too. Vercin's old account did mass archer cav, then liberty too. Mass camels were featured here by xfs and nigel used them a lot. Luzbel had some op  combos: skirm cav+spear shield or slingers+blackcloaks.  And many strategies they brought from other games and many get reinvented all the time.

Champ spam was a a19 thing iirc, until they got nerfed.

Slinger spam came after cav & champ nerf. Fanatics rose and died in this alpha iirc as well. Skiritai still good

Archer spam came after slinger nerf.

Kisses, wang

Edited March 6, 2022 by wang_wei

[delvin]

welcome to my world since I am constantly accused of being it and because I have no Rank

att _darl

[Emperior]

@Yekaterina so you are trying to complain here about known fact that you are making multi-accounts, bascially smurfing which is the only reason why people do assumptions of "who is that person"? darn, I never though I will read something as sad as this topic just because the creator of the topic has caused the issues after which the person still creates about that topic... Sad.

 

You always say that you do smurf, so accept that people will not trust in other players. Yes, exactly. You are one of the reasons why people do, jc is another one. There's plenty of people who do smurf.  So the only way to fight smurf is : find out, ban smurf accounts in matches as there are no moderators of lobby online. (User1 isnt robot yet, so doubt we can blame him for that.) Until the smurfing won't be dealt with by the devs like @Stan`the issue will occur more and more.

You dont like when people assume, people also dont like smurf's.

 

[delvin]

create a kind of ranges to know which are the players at that level

[KKaslana]

14 minutes ago, Emperior said:

@Yekaterina so you are trying to complain here about known fact that you are making multi-accounts, bascially smurfing which is the only reason why people do assumptions of "who is that person"? darn, I never though I will read something as sad as this topic just because the creator of the topic has caused the issues after which the person still creates about that topic... Sad.

 

You always say that you do smurf, so accept that people will not trust in other players. Yes, exactly. You are one of the reasons why people do, jc is another one. There's plenty of people who do smurf.  So the only way to fight smurf is : find out, ban smurf accounts in matches as there are no moderators of lobby online. (User1 isnt robot yet, so doubt we can blame him for that.) Until the smurfing won't be dealt with by the devs like @Stan`the issue will occur more and more.

You dont like when people assume, people also dont like smurf's.

I am afraid I cannot agree with your viewpoint here. 

Sometimes I just remain idle and observe lobby conversations, without interacting with anyone and few people ever noticed me. Approximately 1/3 of the conversation is about advertising games and asking for players to join; another 1/3 is post-mortem of games where players compliment each other or insult each other; about 1/4 is smurf speculation and the remaining parts are in other languages that I cannot understand. 

Out of all of the smurf speculations I have observed so far (at least 20 cases), there had only been 2 correct guesses; all of the other attempts were wrong, a 10% accuracy. An interesting observation was, the speculators themselves were absolutely convinced with their reasoning and refused to listen to other player's guesses. The deduction reasoning of the smurf speculators roughly follows these 3 paths:

1. Who does this playstyle resemble?

2. Who could invent this name?

3. The style of language used by this smurf. 

Once a player satisfies all 3 criteria, then the speculator is convinced of this player's identity. Intuitively, this logic is sound, however, one must consider the possibility of non-unique solutions to the problem and the plausibility of a player changing their strategy. If one would like to conceal their identity, they would alter their use of language and playstyle, even if it means hindering their skills slightly. These often throw the speculators off-course and wrong an innocent player while leaving the real culprits amok. 

 

On the case of Yekaterina, as a fellow student in the same university as her, I can responsibly tell you that she has been ill since last Thursday evening and any potential smurfs you saw since then couldn't have been her. Furthermore, a technical difficulty specific to Eduroam (the WiFi network in our university) prevents more than 1 account from logging in simultaneously, that means, if she is online, then I must be offline. This problem first appeared in January 2022 - I believe she has not been able to make another account since then. I have watched her try to create another account over VPN, different HWID spoofers but all of her attempts failed and resulted in her being banned. Therefore, Emperior's claim that Yekaterina 'is still smurfing' is wrong. We used to swap laptops to play the game, so at times, I was playing behind what appeared to be Yekaterina, on her laptop. Sometimes people could notice but most of the time people never knew a change! One week ago, I found a method to circumvent this bug and enjoy myself in the lobby independent of her. However, I have not taught her how to do it yet! Therefore she still does not have the ability to create another account, at least when she is in the university. 

I doubt that you will believe anything that I say, which is expected considering I am always anonymous and rarely participate in lobby games. However, I would like to inform you that even the things you most firmly believe in could be wrong. Assumptions will remain speculative until they are proven or set as an axiom. 

[Emperior]

10 minutes ago, KKaslana said:

I am afraid I cannot agree with your viewpoint here. 

Sometimes I just remain idle and observe lobby conversations, without interacting with anyone and few people ever noticed me. Approximately 1/3 of the conversation is about advertising games and asking for players to join; another 1/3 is post-mortem of games where players compliment each other or insult each other; about 1/4 is smurf speculation and the remaining parts are in other languages that I cannot understand. 

Out of all of the smurf speculations I have observed so far (at least 20 cases), there had only been 2 correct guesses; all of the other attempts were wrong, a 10% accuracy. An interesting observation was, the speculators themselves were absolutely convinced with their reasoning and refused to listen to other player's guesses. The deduction reasoning of the smurf speculators roughly follows these 3 paths:

1. Who does this playstyle resemble?

2. Who could invent this name?

3. The style of language used by this smurf. 

Once a player satisfies all 3 criteria, then the speculator is convinced of this player's identity. Intuitively, this logic is sound, however, one must consider the possibility of non-unique solutions to the problem and the plausibility of a player changing their strategy. If one would like to conceal their identity, they would alter their use of language and playstyle, even if it means hindering their skills slightly. These often throw the speculators off-course and wrong an innocent player while leaving the real culprits amok. 

 

On the case of Yekaterina, as a fellow student in the same university as her, I can responsibly tell you that she has been ill since last Thursday evening and any potential smurfs you saw since then couldn't have been her. Furthermore, a technical difficulty specific to Eduroam (the WiFi network in our university) prevents more than 1 account from logging in simultaneously, that means, if she is online, then I must be offline. This problem first appeared in January 2022 - I believe she has not been able to make another account since then. I have watched her try to create another account over VPN, different HWID spoofers but all of her attempts failed and resulted in her being banned. Therefore, Emperior's claim that Yekaterina 'is still smurfing' is wrong. We used to swap laptops to play the game, so at times, I was playing behind what appeared to be Yekaterina, on her laptop. Sometimes people could notice but most of the time people never knew a change! One week ago, I found a method to circumvent this bug and enjoy myself in the lobby independent of her. However, I have not taught her how to do it yet! Therefore she still does not have the ability to create another account, at least when she is in the university. 

I doubt that you will believe anything that I say, which is expected considering I am always anonymous and rarely participate in lobby games. However, I would like to inform you that even the things you most firmly believe in could be wrong. Assumptions will remain speculative until they are proven or set as an axiom. 

No offence but your post looks like an article of best top TV show which do flip flop with the words of others. Anyway, I will keep it short and sweet.

 

Quote

Sometimes I just remain idle and observe lobby conversations, without interacting with anyone and few people ever noticed me.

 Do you really think people are checking who's specting lobby? Seriously, are you joking here, right? I doubt I ever played with you or saw you in the lobby (nickname on forum), so at that point I see no point to discuss that anymore. Thanks. Just to let you know 90% of speculations happening in spectators ingame.

 

Quote

since last Thursday evening and any potential smurfs you saw since then couldn't have been her.

I didn't see any at least in the games which I am playing in, which is simply good.

 

Quote

Furthermore, a technical difficulty specific to Eduroam (the WiFi network in our university) prevents more than 1 account from logging in simultaneously, that means, if she is online, then I must be offline.

At that point I should stop reading that post. Do you know that only moderators see the IP, also very important note for yourself. Multi-accounts are not getting banned right now even if all of them were created from 1 IP. So, what has an ip to do with smurfing if 1 person can create 10000000 accounts under same IP?

 

Quote

Out of all of the smurf speculations I have observed so far (at least 20 cases), there had only been 2 correct guesses;

How do you know both were correct? How do you know if any of them were not correct? are you lobby admin? or talking trash here?

Quote

. Who does this playstyle resemble?

90% people in 0ad repeat same moves over and over so it gets boring, spam women, get rushed gg, spam women, get good eco, die like nub, spam women and say you re pro in  spamming women by calling it booming. Same civ (up to 3) as other civs are unknown to that person or just dont like them.

 

Quote

2. Who could invent this name?

I am player who started in a21, I doubt I ever seen that happening but hey, it's fine to think like that or say, I can't prove you wrong due possibility of not seeing this.

3. No point to comment, I think you are smart and know reasoning for this one.

 

Quote

Therefore, Emperior's claim that Yekaterina 'is still smurfing' is wrong.

So her created and used accounts which she does have has been deleted / banned from last thursday or you just wanted to say something ?

Quote

Sometimes people could notice but most of the time people never knew a change! One week ago, I found a method to circumvent this bug and enjoy myself in the lobby independent of her. However, I have not taught her how to do it yet! Therefore she still does not have the ability to create another account, at least when she is in the university. 

Must be a magic trick. Exit game > switch on game > create new profile > fill in and accept  > you can now log in.  IP doesn't matter as far as I remember.

On the 15th of January said:

Quote

4. I move around a lot and use VPNs, so I may appear at new locations suddenly. There is no regulation against using VPNs so I don't see why I should get a stream error when playing over VPN. 

Just because someone doesn't use their smurf account for few days or weeks, doesn't mean he /she doesnt smurf.

In game Chat Yek said:

Just let me relog on my smurf account.

That was quite few weeks ago.

 

Quote

I doubt that you will believe anything that I say, which is expected considering I am always anonymous and rarely participate in lobby games

Your're right here. Congratz.

[KKaslana]

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

Do you really think people are checking who's specting lobby? Seriously, are you joking here, right? I doubt I ever played with you or saw you in the lobby (nickname on forum), so at that point I see no point to discuss that anymore. Thanks. Just to let you know 90% of speculations happening in spectators ingame.

 

List of usernames: Christoffel-Symbol, Christoffel-Symbol1, 2, 3, ..., 8, Sevda, Elena137, Sixth-Serenade (I gave her my password and it became hers), lagrange, Kallen (initially mine but she guessed my password and stole it)... Sometimes I play as her on her laptop and few people could notice.

I do join as spectator at weekends and I quite often see you play, but I don't think you noticed me. 

 

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

Multi-accounts are not getting banned right now even if all of them were created from 1 IP. So, what has an ip to do with smurfing if 1 person can create 10000000 accounts under same IP?

It seems that either our IP or her hardware address has been put on a blacklist, which could explain.

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

0% people in 0ad repeat same moves over and over so it gets boring, spam women, get rushed gg, spam women, get good eco, die like nub, spam women and say you re pro in  spamming women by calling it booming. Same civ (up to 3) as other civs are unknown to that person or just dont like them.

The interesting problem is, certain people spread rumours about how other people play... For example, I like mass cavalry attack at minute 7-10 with at least 25 cavalry units, but some people keep claiming that I am a fast boomer and ask me to boom instead of rush whenever I play. Booming is not my preferred style of playing but for the greater good of the team I often boom as they asked.

In terms of civilization, I don't have a strong preference but I think Ptolemies have extremely strong economy and can win any battle close to their base, but they lack manouvreability due to pikemen, therefore they will fail on large maps against cavalry. Iberian champion cavalry is OP but the civ as a whole is irritating to play with because of the walls which obstruct your resource gathering. Spartans have the strongest infantry and manoeuvreability but they seem to lose to Ptolemaic economy and Iberian champion cavalry. 

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

Exit game > switch on game > create new profile > fill in and accept  > you can now log in.  IP doesn't matter as far as I remember.

This doesn't apply for me I am afraid, I get banned when I try this. 

 

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

So her created and used accounts which she does have has been deleted / banned from last thursday or you just wanted to say something ?

I can confirm that they are all gone. When we returned to school after Christmas break, I kept receiving 'authentication error' from the lobby. Kate's solution was letting me use her smurf accounts, so she produced a list of her accounts and I tried all of them systematically. Some of these were banned in mere seconds meanwhile others lasted a few hours before they are banned.  

1 hour ago, Emperior said:

In game Chat Yek said:

Just let me relog on my smurf account.

That was quite few weeks ago.

Quite a few weeks ago - sometime in late January. I do not remember her saying this and I have not taught her how to bypass any bans. I am aware of some methods myself but I haven't told her yet. Would you like me to teach her?

[sarcoma]

7 hours ago, KKaslana said:

Would you like me to teach her?

just with 1 account each, u both come play with weirdjokes et al.

Edited March 9, 2022 by sarcoma

[KKaslana]

54 minutes ago, sarcoma said:

ust with 1 account each, u both come to play with weirdjokes et al.

Perhaps when she feels better. 

Why weirdJokes in particular? I would any player above a threshold (1300-1400) into my hosted game, with a few exceptions. Whether other hosts would permit me to play in their games is another issue that I am not very concerned about. 

 

 

 

[sarcoma]

2 hours ago, KKaslana said:

Why weirdJokes in particular?

No reason. Any op 4v4

[thephilosopher]

10 hours ago, KKaslana said:

Out of all of the smurf speculations I have observed so far (at least 20 cases), there had only been 2 correct guesses; all of the other attempts were wrong, a 10% accuracy. An interesting observation was, the speculators themselves were absolutely convinced with their reasoning and refused to listen to other player's guesses. The deduction reasoning of the smurf speculators roughly follows these 3 paths:

1. Who does this playstyle resemble?

2. Who could invent this name?

3. The style of language used by this smurf. 

 

 

For the record, if anyone ever sees someone in the lobby named "the_sophist" who plays Sparta like a 1250ish player and starts talking like the Aristophanes version of Socrates, I'm probably smurfing. Or someone's playing a joke on me.

Edited March 9, 2022 by thephilosopher

[Yekaterina]

@Emperior All I wanted to say is, don't annoy random new players just because you think they are a smurf. 

I can't stop you from doing that. I know who is behind which account most of the time, because I have these smurfs' discord or instagram and they tell me, then I tell @KKaslana when they appear in his games. 

When I see you guys speculate, it's like watching blindfolded clowns in a circus  you almost never get any smurfs right  

Some people even dm me to ask about accounts and that was funny then it became irritating.

Anyways, I am still a bit ill so I am not in the mood for this rubbish nor have I got the ability to make more accounts after the magical ban on my hardware ID and IP

 

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

2 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

When I see you guys speculate, it's like watching blindfolded clowns in a circus  you almost never get any smurfs right  

One time I saw FRENCH_GOD join a 4v4 as spec. I said immediately "Hello Dakara", and he asked if I could see his IP, lol. I never even saw the account before.

I can ususally tell if I know them well enough or if its obvious enough. I think it is fun/funny to guess on smurfs, but I dont think they should be subjected to the "smurf inquisition".

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Gurken Khan]

@BreakfastBurrito_007Yeah, especially since from the new players nobody will expect the smurf inquisition.

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I can ususally tell if I know them well enough or if its obvious enough. I think it is fun/funny to guess on smurfs, but I dont think they should be subjected to the "smurf inquisition".

 

I like this, treating it as a puzzle instead of an interrogation