Changing Moneytransfers

[Kwissy]

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.

[Andreas]

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...

[Kwissy]

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.

[Andreas]

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?

[Kwissy]

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.

[The_Dude]

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.

[naz]

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.

[alex879ro]

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?

[Chucky]

@alex: I agree and this is not a flattery.    - oh, I just rhymes..

[naz]

Thanx Alex....Very well said

[Andreas]

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...

[Kwissy]

@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.

[imus]

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

[alex879ro]

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

[Kwissy]

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 =)