n-ice.org OpenTTD Forum
Administration => Suggestions => Topic started by: Kwissy on November 21, 2013, 05:33:56 am
-
Wouldn't it be a good solution to disable moneytransfers at all? I mean in any case it gives an unfair advantage. Moneytransfers are biasing the scoring-system running in the background which also gives points for the amount of money you have. If the moneytransfers stay active, then there should be a clear rule, how much transfer is allowed and what is to much. Share your opinions please.
-
To be honest I am quite surprised that up to now it had not been abused (not very obvius at least).
If I recall correctly, the idea has allways been to encourage social gameplay. If you look at it objectively though every money transfer is cheating in some way.
We have all had situations where you overstrech your line and you need just a few thousand to complete it. Or your train takes just a bit too long and have a good chance of bancrupting. In thos cases even a 10k transfer can make a huge difference.
The question here is: how bad is this? Good players don't need the money to winn, less experienced players ususally won't win, even with moneytransfers.
In my opinion there are only 2 options:
1. Keep it as is and leave it to admins to judge what fair and unfair beaviour is
2. Disable all moneytransfers.
Making guidelines on how much money is allowed to be transferred imo won't work because it depends on too many variables like goal, game length, duration of the game to name a few...
-
How can something be abused that is allowed on not regulated by the rules?
Well i transfered 30billions to my mate and got a penalty for it, of course it was obvious. No rules just mean there is also no limit on that function.
-
On 1 hand you say if there are no rules it can't be abused, on the other hand you seem to understand how transferring as much as you did ruins the game...
So your point is? Should there be rules about it or not? An if there should be how much is acceptable?
-
Of course it ruins the game, so simply disable it in my opinion. But the game is not ruined by the players doing that, it is ruined by activating such a feature in multiplayergames.
As a short example... imagine a policeman brings you to jail for something there is no law for it, just because he thinks it is not ok what you did.
-
Kwissy has the point. If you enabled money transfers, it is quite OK to transfer any amout.
Having money based goal while enabled money transfers certainly leads to blame the server owner, not the players.
-
Andreas has made a valid point, but option 2 also contradicts "encourage social gameplay".
the idea has always been to encourage social gameplay.
The question here is: how bad is this? Good players don't need the money to winn, less experienced players ususally won't win, even with moneytransfers.
In my opinion there are only 2 options:
1. Keep it as is and leave it to admins to judge what fair and unfair beaviour is
2. Disable all moneytransfers.
Making guidelines on how much money is allowed to be transferred imo won't work because it depends on too many variables like goal, game length, duration of the game to name a few...
Option 1 also has pocilicing problem, ie this type of cheating can only be discovered by doing in depth investigation.
Its a difficult one.
-
People.....relax about this problem.
1. Kwissy, it has been more then 2 weeks since your ban expired, and you still haven`t gotten over this. Yesterday you asked someone how he got 927 points for s4....if he money transfered. Now you suggest to turn off money transfer.
Hint: There are many ways of cheating a scoring system. Money transfer is just one. But most of the attempts get caught. Why do they get caught, I won`t tell you, but it is enough to know that they do. The same way you were caught.
You don`t have to do a "deep investigation". It is actually quite easy easy to spot scoring cheaters.
Also, this is not the parliament. We don`t administrate a database of 50 million players that live in our servers to afford to say "if it`s not in the rules, it is legal".
We do not have the means to cover that idea, and most certainly a lot time of time would be lost into developing a system of rules because each admin has their own oppinion about this matter.
In the end, I find it more simple to just allow money transfer, and punish the cheaters. Also Kwissy, when you get 1800 points for 2 players, you knew that it is cheat, because there is no way that you can normally get that amount of points.
My advice: Don`t be stuck on what you did. Simply move on. It was a mistake.....or so I consider it to be. But do not turn this into the goal of your life.
2. Beul: I agree with your first oppinion. Indeed we can turn it off or keep it. I consider it can be kept for reasons which were described in the forum (if i`m not remembering wrong)
3. Naz: We don`t need an in depth investigation. It takes us about 5 minutes to realise if a score is cheated. Not to even mention that admins with access to the database can see that instantly.
P.S. After looking at the rules. Rule 1: Respect the Multiplayer Rules
When looking into the Multiplayer Rules : http://wiki.openttd.org/Multiplayer_Rules , you find this:
Don't cheat to advance yourself within the game. Joining a company operated by someone else or starting another company to transfer money to your own company is unacceptable behaviour, unless the originally owning player made it clear that he or she is leaving the game, has no intentions to return and offers themselves or their resources to anyone else who wants them
So Kwissy, I ask you one more time: Are you sure that you were banned for doing something that it is not within the rules?
-
@alex: I agree and this is not a flattery. ;D - oh, I just rhymes..
-
Thanx Alex....Very well said ;D
-
I don't think you guys understood my point:
ANY amount of money transfer can have a quite large impact on the score. If I have double the initial loan at start I can start way faster and thus end the game faster and score more points. If you are playing coop from the start that effect is even higher because you can both build full speed from the very beginning.
Seriously the one that should cool down is you alex... Not every comment on the way things are set up is criticism. In fact community feedback is what makes a good server excellent.
You are the only one that brought up the case in which you punished Kwissy. He did not appeal to his ban in this topic, he simply started a discussion on how the settings could be changed to improve the current situation. The reason he did this now might be that he got punished but that should not influence the way you judge his proposal.
In the last place, I don't think pretending to be able to spot cheated situations so easily improves your credibility or understanding of the mechanics of the game and the scoring sysytem. A recent example would be the shoutbox spectacle...
-
@alex
If you really think i still care about the punishment you are completely wrong but if you want to start it over again =) No mather how you want to turn it around, the rule you mentioned does not cover what i and a friend did. And of course it does not say what amount is forbidden, so your arguments can not make real sense. This has nothing to do what i believe or not, it has something to do what everyone can read on the rules, and which is simply disabled on most servers, because it is biasing the results.
My point is i want to make clear that any amount of moneytransfer, especially at the start, will change the outcome of a company and is a bad behavior on a score-based server. As admin you understand and get that point i guess. Well to me it looks more like you are stuck on Kwissy the "evil cheater" instead of handle a suggestion as what it was meant.
-
Back on topic: here's my opinion as requested in the original post.
Although true that some money transfers at the start of the game can have a huge impact no matter how small, we don't really know of any cases where this enabled a new record.
The usual way that money transfers ARE used (that we know of) are:
- people join in really late and the good players send some money so they can quickly do SOMETHING at least :) (fun times)
- people abuse it to get better scores, are discovered as cheating and punished.
So it's a choice between allowing the first option and preventing the possibility to abuse...
I'd choose the latter one but since it makes so little difference overall I wouldn't care whichever option you would pick
-
Imus, I`ll go off-topic a bit and ask when are we gonna see you around here? :) I was curious about this for some time :D
-
Well there was a guy that obviously scored a record on server 4 a long time ago, which you did not detect or notice at all, until i came up with it. He clearly did something to boost his company, you cannot finish server 4 in 6 years by playing it regular.
@offtopic privatemessage-function is wonderfull =)
-
Kwissy, as I said , you seem to be centered on a fact: the money transfer cheat. There may have been errors with Kanneman...or...I don`t know. Also, we do not verify evey second. We do verify from time to time.
There were 5 cases so far, as I remember:
2 cases got caught and punished
2 cases- caught, apologised and promised never to do it again
1 case - it was noticed for a few months and it slipped away (Kanneman case)
Also, I don`t consider that it is worth the time and the effort to find Kanneman`s game and to investigate if what he did was cheating or simply server error. Afterall, it`s only one game and it wasn`t caught. So he stopped after one game (error or not)
I consider this a pretty good statistic. Of course, if we would catch Kanneman doing such a thing, the punishment would be desastrous for him and bigger then yours.
In the meantime, let it go. Stop being so centered on this matter. You keep reminding about that case, but you keep forgeting the other 4 that were caught.
You also accused Michael, and you were wrong. Not every score like this is cheating. As I said...there are also scoring errors.
We have been having this scoring system for more then 2 years. I`d say it behaved quite well so far.
Also, you affirmation about the fact that we did not detect such cheatings before you did it is trully wrong.
You were the 4th case when this happened and the 2nd punished very hard mostly because of the attempt to lie about it and due to your hostile attitude in spite of the truth. The first case got a 2 months ban. The other 2 cases were treated lightly because they admitted it, before we could even talk with them, apologised and promised not to do it again.(we didn`t even told them why we want to talk with them when they apologised and promised)
Unfortunately, I cannot mention the player nicknames because I don`t consider such an action to be fit, but I consider I have given you enough information about this matter.
Now please, let it go. This isn`t a new subject, this isn`t a subject where we are blind.
-
@Alex Maybe it's just me, but you seem to use what kwissy did as an excuse not to consider his opinion. I point out again that you are the only one bringing up specific cases. He did NOT protest to the way you handled that incident in this topic.
It is your good right to disagree with his oppinion, but dismissing it just because he was punished for it is not the right thing to do.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SECTION OF THE POST REMOVED BY Alex879ro due to the fact that it provides a guide for whoever is reading in how to use a cheat-------------------------------------------------------
If you think the cases of abuse do not weigh up to the cases where it is used socially, you are welcome to that opinion. But don't pretend that it has never happened undetected and that you can easily spot it if it happens again. that just makes you look silly
-
Beul, you`re making me agressive again. I asked him to cut it out with the idea.
All those above were oppinions pro/con stated because he was trying to convince me of something. To be honest, the underground cases are very small...into someone asking for 500k cause he goes broke. I consider that because the entire team of admins would have noticed it. We do have admins that play and also that play under different indentities. You were an admin, you really want me to explain you publicly how this is done?
Over-all, nobody ever considered the small cases to be a problem. As for the "underground network" , i do not consider that it exists. Also, I ask you the same thing that I asked Cossack: Do not post comments that will help other players cheat. I have messaged your your original reply. If it wasn`t tried until now, please do not give ideas.
From the oppinions that I saw here and from the admin talk that I`ve had with some colleagues, I consider that the money transfer is not a problem at least at the moment. I see no reason to make it harder for the few new players that OpenTTD still has by removing money transfer.
Kwissy mentioned the only case that we didn`t catch which is Kanneman. I stated the others so that he doesn`t believe that he is the first caught case.
Also, I don`t know if you do know this, but Kwissy has become a bit centered on this idea. He posted this topic in the same day or a bit after complaining about Michael. We started investigating the problem, we asked Michael to come on IRC, and surprise: It was an error of our own scoring system.
So I consider that 2 complaints in 2 consecutive days does point out a bit of an obsession.
-
in my humble opinion, The_Dude, in few words, said it all here (http://www.n-ice.org/openttd/forum/index.php?topic=483.msg2798#msg2798).
now, to justify my opinion:
If a player is leaving the game for any reason and Give money option is enabled he can distribute the "stash" among all players or can give it all to 1 company (note: the leaving player can, currently, Give money to a specific player, it doesn't matter the company that player is in). And since the player that receives the money has nothing todo with the player that gives it (obviously different companies; because possible to Give money inside same company :D), Multiplayer Rules (http://wiki.openttd.org/Multiplayer_Rules) says that's ok. Being correct and fair, all money transfers beyond the max available loan gives an unfair advantage to who received it!
The only point that (possibly) will fit is: "Don't abuse bugs or exploits because this only harms OpenTTD gameplay and destroys the gameplay of other people.", but... it's not a bug and if "the originally owning player made it clear that he or she is leaving the game, has no intentions to return and offers themselves or their resources to anyone else who wants them", it's not an exploit.
So, if the above conditions are met, Give money is ok or not? And why?
Anyway, The_Dude used some words, wich I agree... I've only tried to justify my opinion.
enjoy the games :)
edit: added (possibly)
-
I understand your oppinion. You are more decissive then me. Either it is or it isn`t.
I personally still see a difference between a player leaving and wanting to make a gift, and a player starting a company and transfering all of the money right before the end of the game.Technically we`re not punishing by the transferred amount, but we`re punishing the intention of creating another company and transferring the money to it which is indeed "cheating to advance yourself within the game".
Also, you know about the rule that each player with 1 company. I know that overall, the set of rules can lead to a small discussion here because there are ways through which a player can transfer the money without having 2 companies that are his at once, but still....it is a clear intention of advancing yourself within the game.
About the idea of players changing the course of a game because leaving and making gifts, we never had a complaint on this matter. At leas I never heard of someone complaining for this. I also never heard about large amounts being transferred this way. I did hear of a player dividing his money to all the other players. Indeed, it`s a small change in the course of the game, but nothing that can`t be understood (my oppinion)
So giving money when the specific player leaves the game is ok. Transferring money in order to advance yourself within the game is not ok.
In the case of Kwissy, he and chocolate-starfish made another company and transferred the money from constructor`s company. (chocolate-starfish was playing in the same company with constructor. Neither chocolate-starfish, nor constructor were planning to leave. Constructor was afk so they did this without telling him anything.
To answer your question: (in my oppinion) To give money can be ok or not, depends on the intention.
-
I just asked Micheal in the Shoutbox if he Transfered Money, nothing more, no clue where i should have convicted him of cheating. Of course i ask him when it happened, how could i asked him before it happend? I guess this thread was started before the highscore on server 4 happened, but correct me if i am wrong.
I mean honestly, i point out something that went wrong and ask the player what he did, he gave a proper answer to it and then the next thing that i hear is Chuckys famous shout... "Don't throw bricks when you live in a glass house.". After that, even if the case was pretty obvious, Alex deleted his complete score he did in that game and asked him to explain what happened. If Alex in his words can see it in minutes if it was a cheated score, why the explanation? This can only happen when money transfers are enabled, else it would be clear from the start that it has to be something server-related.
Not consider a remove of moneytransfers just because Kwissy brought this kind of thread online again would be blind. Fact is, it has a good reason why people discuss in here and thats not because i started it, its because there are issues with it and people are free to share their opinion about the known facts.
@alex
I know it is hard for you to believe, but this thread was started as a regular suggestion and is linked in no way with the punishment you gave to me.
-
Kwissy, you lied when we caught you cheating, you`re lying now. You want to do a little psychology to see if in fact you were obsessed with the idea of money transfer?
1. Using the shoutbox :
Kwissy 21.11.2013 19:40 [UTC] :michael what exactly is the reason you scored 927 points on server 4... you transfered money?
Kwissy 21.11.2013 19:56 [UTC] :Maybe a scoringserver issue? (after 16 minutes from the original post, you were still thinking about it and tried to make it look a bit more normal)
Michael 21.11.2013 20:34 [UTC]: heh, dont know, i just get it. Normally playin.
Michael 21.11.2013 20:35 [UTC] :You also get a lot of points I see
Kwissy 22.11.2013 08:52 [UTC]: yeah, but i scored my best ones in regular games, 20mio per train/year gives mass points (while he did what?)
Why did you ask him if it was a server error first? Could it be that the only possible outcome you were concentrated was the idea that he could have been cheated and not be punished?
-Writing in the forum
« on: November 21, 2013, 05:33:56 am » Starting this topic --->> means that 14 hours earlier before asking Michael about that, you were still thinking about money transfer.
Chucky`s reply came naturally from noticing all of the above. After that, I removed his scoring under the SUSPICION of cheating as it was writed in his profile.
Yes, Alex`s words: we can check in a minute to see if someone cheated. That`s why before Michael got on IRC to talk to us, we already knew that it was a server error.
Also, you should know that some of us got different responsabilities and permissions. In my case, I do not administrate the database. My colleagues Der_Herr and Myhorta do that. Verifying the game in the database takes about 1 minute. Also, from what I know, Myhorta will implement a way so the others can check the scoring the simplest way.
Most of all, error or not, I wanted an oppinion from Michael too which was important for us into finding out what happened with the scoring system. But those are admins problems which do not need to be known by the players. Overall it was no bluf when I told you we can find out.
"This can only happen when money transfers are enabled, else it would be clear from the start that it has to be something server-related"
Really? There are many ways of cheating the score, money transfer is only one....the only that obsesses you. Otherwise this sentence would not have existed.
Not consider a remove of moneytransfers just because Kwissy brought this kind of thread online again would be blind. Fact is, it has a good reason why people discuss in here and thats not because i started it, its because there are issues with it and people are free to share their opinion about the known facts.
I did consider it, otherwise I would not have answered the post. I just asked to understand that after seeing the other oppinions, I do not agree with your view. If there are more admins not agreeing to what I have said, please, write it here so we can see your oppinions too.
Issues with it? The only issues are yours which I do not agree with because some of the arguments you presented do not exist:
Michael cheated: not true
Kanneman cheated: not known
not in the rules: not true
So, I did consider it, I just do not agree with your oppinion, and after everything that was discussed here, my verdict is leaving the current rule as it is and money transfer enabled.
@Kwissy it is hard for me to believe because of what I described above. Personally, you should know that I`m not the only one considering that you recently got let`s say a small obsession with the money transfer.
-
I feel urge to contribute at least once more.
Alex, as you pointed to OpenTTD general multiplayer rule abot abusing game features. I considered that one also before my first post and I thought that it does not fit this case. In my opinion the rule talks about abusing cheats ad exploits, which money transfer alone is not. Naturally, since n-ice runs CV goal, this thing becomes disputable, but I still incline to dont consider it cheat, rather to have it weakness of goal system.
I allow to diverge to my admin role at Novapolis. If someone found some way to quite unfairly, yet within rules gain uneven amount of points, let's consider moeny transfer (though we have it disabled), I would not of course like it, but on the other hand, I guess I would not punish it, unless it was stated in rules or something.
n-ice servers are not Novapolis, so that does not matter.
Also as I understood from this conversation, part of the punishment reason was that Kwissy lied. Well, that's not nice thing to do. People should not lie.
There is one thing you can do about money transfers though in system itself.
1) add it to rules
2) and more effective one, though not easier. Money transfer is done in OpenTTD by command system, which is traceable by admin port, which means xShunter can detect it. This can be used to substract the donated money from the goal, this making money transfers inneffective to reach goal. This one of course requires someone to implement it, which is the harder part with xOR vacation season :-)
Anyway, encore for kwissy. I still admire the feat of transferring 30 bln EUR, since you can donate max 20 mil at once, it means he had to do it 1500x? Unless there is easier way which I dont know of, this is freaking insane!
-
@the_dude
Yes i transfered 750 times 40mio.
@alex
Well it is not acceptable that an admin calls a player liar in a public forum. What the hell drives you Alex, when did i lie a single word? I think it is time to come up with facts and not with your usual unfunded bullshit. Are you mixing Chocolate Starfish messages with my ones right? I ask you again when did i lie to you???
Right now everyone just can see how good you do your job, get rid of that, stay with the facts and become a real admin please.
-
:)))
The_Dude, you`re right, they did do it 1500x. I understood your point same as St2`s, I`m currently considering it and I`ve been thinking about it. But I`m still waiting to see the oppinions of the admins of n-ice on this matter.
As I said...if it was up to me...the difference is huge between transferring 20 mil or 40 mil (1x or 2x) and transferring 1500x. That can be clearly considered cheating to advance yourself within the game. In fact this is what it is since it advances your point number.
Kwissy`s punishment was 1 week originally. And it was for stealing someone else`s cv without their permission and for cheating. But after his team mate in this , Chocolate-Starfish or Kwissy himself (I don`t remember with who I talked from the 2 of them and searching the logs is not possible now) tried to lie until me the very end, I asked him one question:
If I search and the logs demonstrate that you and Kwissy cheated, I will double your punishments. He answered : OK , being absolutely sure that I can`t catch them.
Also, before applying the punishment, both of them try to lie, saying that they didn`t do anything wrong. As I said before, we had cases of transfer cheating where people apologised and showed that they trully regret what they did, so we didn`t apply any punishment. Here there was no sign of remorse before the punishment was applied, so I kept my word and doubled their punishment. From 1 week ban and 2000 points deduction to 2 weeks ban and 4000 points deduction.
You and St2 got a very good point there, but it still differs on the point of view: if you choose to judge the intention or not.
I hope that maybe, perhaps,possibly,pretty pretty pretty please, my fellow colleagues would like to post their oppinions here :) so that I can see if I`m representing the majority of oppinions or not :)
-
Kwissy, please remain on the polite-talking part of the conversation.
1st of all: the punishment was 3-4 weeks ago. I do have other things in life except remembering what you and Chocolate-Starfish said.
2nd: Denying that you did anything wrong is in fact a lie. Stealing from a player is something wrong. Trying to cheat the number of points is something wrong.
True, you apologised, but it was AFTER the punishment. I do remember why I banned you both: Because none of you considered that you did anything wrong.
That is why I reflected on the situation and choose to apply a punishment and not warn you and deduct the points.
-
Very well. Another session of opening the logs and searching for proofs for Kwissy.
I can tell you something Kwissy, your attitude is very infuriating. Never admitting what you do.
After re-reading the logs:
Transferring money 750x times in order to advance himself within the game is not something wrong.
Stealing the money from Constructor`s company is not something wrong.
Main Argument: It`s not in the rules (even if it is a situation where he cheated in order to advance himself within the game)
Could be even considered using an exploit. And yes Kwissy, stealing a player`s money without his permission is cheating.
Over-all attitude: very hostile and not willing to accept that what he did was wrong.
I hope tomorrow evening or saturday, I will have the time to search the logs of #OpenTTD (which are very massive) so I can post the conversations with Kwissy and Chocolate-Starfish from there too, so I can talk on facts from now on.
-
"Very hostile" you just made my day =) I do not fear the facts, i am pretty sure i do not have to correct what i said.
It all comes down to the point, that this servers have enabled money-transfers and you have missed to set up just a single rule for it. There is a good reason why it is not allowed on other communities. If you have no transfers enabled, players will have to learn to manage their money better and invest time into looking for better tactics, which in the end would make some of the community players stronger.
-
Well, in the light is that someone uses transfers 1500x, knowing that he will gain inappropriate reward is mor or less exploiting. Thus the punishment is at place. On the other hand from point or development it also discovered system weakness.
Either way, flame discussions are sometimes fun to read, though I doubt anybody of you has need to show off. :)
-
I am sorry Kwissy, but you are not the one to decide here. Unfortunately, you are nothing here except someone with an obsession. We do have an admin team that makes the decisions and the operator team that implements them.
A rule of common sense would be to never try to force others not do something that you did. But you don`t care.
You also came up with a plan where others must learn to manage their money better because you cheat. You do not care about the very few new player that OpenTTD has and that are learning the game each day. For those the money transfer, is indeed a blessing and I`ve seen it being used a lot of did.
You make people waste their time with you, and search for "facts" and when you`re in front of them , you simply change the subject. That`s also what Chocolate-Starfish did.
As I said, from now , please talk to the admin team, or express your oppinion in any way about the money transfer.
@Kwissy: This topic is now closed, because it`s purpose has been passed.
Also, as I said on IRC, if what this player says here is true, I will personally make sure that this is your end in this community. The most bothering is your attitude (you think you know all, you`re always right, and you don`t care about responsabilities).
With this attitude and the all the arguments that you started here. With the fact that you already cheated once. With the fact that you do not admit anything, I can assure, it is more then enough for a permanent ban if what this players says is true.
@others Apologise for my agressive attitude , but I`ve really had enough of this guy and his attitude.
http://www.n-ice.org/openttd/forum/index.php?topic=488.msg2743;boardseen#new
-
Final answer here to make 1 thing clear:
1:
directly from http://wiki.openttd.org/Multiplayer_Rules:
Don't cheat to advance yourself within the game. Joining a company operated by someone else [...] to transfer money to your own company is unacceptable behaviour ...
It is obvious that sending money to your own company is NOT allowed by the general multiplayer rules.
2:
from our own rules:
The main intention of these rules and of every admin watching the server is to keep the fun for all players up. If you work against that intention and constantly annoy players and/or admins – even with only things that the rules don't explicitly forbid – you're still risking to get warned/kicked/banned!
Since it was clear that it was unacceptable behaviour (including the discusions afterwards) getting a punishment was in place.
From my point of view there is no need to change our rules and no need to disable moneytransfers (since they are still mostly used in a positive way to help newbies)
-
Here is someone who knows the rules very well. :-)
Yes, that's make it very clear now.