Fraudful trick

[smursh]

He surrendered in that game just before he decided to stop playing. I would expect it is his way of saying he might as well do what he was found guilty of.

I dislike these unproven/unwarranted accusations and will say no more about it.

[Igor]

SoulMan's offer to look for guilty player each time looks such a boring thing with long and negative discussion. Better to do this one time for now and for future.

SoulMan and Zillusion are competitors for top places and probably will do this in the next season. This supposes to have some games each other, may be more than one like in this season. But not too much though because looks that winner usually get more than loser loses in the same game and 20 games with result 11-9 or 10-10 will move both players up. I'm far from thinking Zillusion and SoulMan could use this but it's necessary to understand this point and to have a limit for such games. That is why I offered 3 games between any teammates per season and 2 additional games with teammates who gets 1-5th places on 1v1 ladder. If it is, SoulMan and Zillusion could play each other 5 games a season for the ladder. Current rules are very good as well, this is what the ladder need.

Let me explain why limit on games between teammates is absolutely necessary. Without such limit Whitelord for example will play 20 games with Smursh next season and being stronger will probably win as 18-2. Seeing this Zillusion would ask Snow to play also 20 games or so, and also being stronger he would win 18-2 as well. If the map they used were comparable they will get comparable ladder points. I don't plan to have much activity on 1v1 ladder next season but if this would be I also can ask one of teammates to play with me 20 games and I perhaps also can win the match with 18-2 or so. Thus 3 players, me, Zillusion and Whitelord, will get big advantage over all, especially over non-team players who will not get just a little chance to win the ladder this way.
Thus what this will be? This will not be fair play as I understand it but more like a kind of deal between teammates. Direct way to discredit the ladder. This is why I think that definite rules about games between teammates are absolutely necessary. Great thing that we have them.

(Smursh, Snow, sorry that I noted you here in context of losing, I based this supposition on current ladder results only.)

[Chazar]

Teams have got nothing to do with it.

It is the possibility to freely choose opponents that allows ladder manipulation, since I can play this trick without being in any team, just having a willing friend account.

Likewise, experts jumping undercover in new games created by me players is skewing the ladder and turning away new players.

Matchmaking is usually used to avoid TT these issues. Otherwise, why not just count at most 2 or 3 ladder games between any two specific players?

[SoulMan]

I see nothing wrong in playing many games with teammate or anyone else, till those will be fair games where both players plays their best. The problem will be if they will play many games and they will do it very fast, without care about moves, and then player A will surrender to player B in every game. In general I think thats not a big problem. But if community thinks it is, I can suggest a good solution:

Make ladder match making system, where players will join queue. For example 4 different queue to choose: small maps / medium maps / big maps / crazy maps. 7 different maps in each pool. When 8 players will join the same queue then maps and matchups will be randomized and 4 games beginned. Merging players with similar ladder score favored. Each player can ban 3 maps in selected pool (so there will be at least 1 not banned by both players). Before joining player can see only how many players are currently waiting in each queue. This system will be nearly 100% fair for everyone (noone can be sure which opponent he will meet and which map, so will not be able to abuse playing just 1 map).

Edited.

[Igor]

Chazar, I can't suppose that somebody who is out of the team will help any player to rise up. What is his reason? Should be no one.
Do you agree that if there is collusion between teammates it should be stopped as soon as it will be discovered?
The situation when it isn't done is described above.
If two teammates wish to play each other a lot of games they can now do this as before, but with non-ladder mode.

[Chazar]

Chazar, I can't suppose that somebody who is out of the team will help any player to rise up. What is his reason? Should be no one.

I can think of many:

• Some of my real-life friends are on Warbarons, but only one is a member of my team.
• My young son has an account, but his playing strength is too weak to allow him into my team, but I could turn our sparring matches into ladder games.
• I could easily create a fake account just for the purpose of cheating in the way you described.

Team membership has nothing to do with this exploit. The exploit is only possible because the ladder allows players to choose their opponents.

Even worse, the newbie who creates a new game has no choice about accepting their opponents, so they often fall prey to expert players who are often online and look for easy prey. It happened to me when I was new, and it did happen to other new players that I eventually helped along here...and it drives many new players away.

Players should only be allowed to ask for ladder status for their games, but only 1-3 games for each specific pairing should be allowed to count per season. Matchmaking would be better, but the mechanism seems buggy (never got a match started by the matchmaker that I had asked for).

[piranha]

The matchmaking was created to make sure that ladder players don't play the same people, the same map as well as make it possible to match players who are even against each other. The problem is that there aren't enough players here to find a pairing fast enough to be effective so it was only used for a while after we created it.

With the current system it's possible as Chazar says to cheat on the ladder. It might get noticed after a while. I don't think there is much problem here with cheating but it would be even harder to cheat if there is a limit to how many games going against the same player at the same time you can have.
I don't think it would have to feel limiting to have such a limit?

[Igor]

If so then should be 3+ games in the same time because some tournaments suppose a match of 3 games, like Growing maps tournament.
May be to limit total number of games with the same person per season, doesn't matter is he from the same team or not, to 5 games or so? If Chazar say that such situation can be.

(Little off-top, sorry) BTW Chazar, can you explain what this for? I mean why do you play with your real-life friends. As for me, Warbarons is another world. We may drink beer with friends, or discuss political situation, or even both this and that. But in the game you see another people with another culture, another style of speaking and even another language. Why to mix all this with real life, what for?

[KGB]

(Little off-top, sorry) BTW Chazar, can you explain what this for? I mean why do you play with your real-life friends. As for me, Warbarons is another world. We may drink beer with friends, or discuss political situation, or even both this and that. But in the game you see another people with another culture, another style of speaking and even another language. Why to mix all this with real life, what for?

I'll give you my answer to this.

Many of my real life friends no longer live really close to me (I live in a different country than the one I grew up in). Even with my friends that live close by it's hard to get together very often because of jobs/family. So when we do, we tend to do exactly as you describe (drink beer, discuss political things, sports, families etc). Playing Warbarons allows us to escape from that and re-live our youth (high school/college years) when we had endless time to get together in person to play games like Risk / Axis and Allies and talk trash over beers. That's the beauty of playing games online, you can still play with old friends even when you all have limited time requirements plus you get to make new ones as you suggested.

KGB

[Igor]

KGB you just pushed me into nostalgia