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Rampant Cheating

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Jun 07, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
We need a tab under vendetta info that tells us what guides are supposed to do, this would stop the current mayhem. We also need:
-A command to message all guides on at the time
-A command that tells us if a guide is on, if so how many
-Being able to message guides when you are mute, if you flood the guide the mute will extend to your pivelege of messageing guides.
Jun 07, 2003 Buckaroo link
I guess the most important problem this game has is not a problem of cheats/exploits - it's player's ego, which unfortunately can't be fixed. The only way to soften this problem would be to hide *all* statistics.

Take for exmaple:

- Capping the flag. Apparently, red is so fixed on the number of capping done by gold that they try to cap every single moment to get even with the number of gold cappings.As if the numbers would mean anything useful.. they would mean something if there would be *constantly* a balanced bunch of players online.

- Score. A lot of people do *everything* just to get into the top ten - right now, it's rather easy if you know the trick, easy, time-consuming and *boring*. Consider: which person would (without being payed) do the same boring thing over and over again, just to get a high score? And since this high score was gained by a kind of exploiting, it's completely meaningless - nevertheless, a lot of players are doing it.

- Grudges. A few time I've encountered grudges against other people just because someone killed them in a fair fight. I myself have experienced the following: I was capping red alone, a player (I won't mention the name) tried to stop me, even without being able to turbo I shot down his valk. I succeeded to cap, and he was so furious, he killed a fellow gold player and laid a trap for me - got me (I don't care) and made a comment: "Don't **** with me". Geez - some people can't stand being beaten...

Anyway, you have to keep it in mind that it's basically an ego question - which just shows how immature a lot of players really are.

Regards,
Mark (Commander Jameson)

Jun 06, 2003 SirCamps link
I really write this thread unwillingly, because it regards several members of the community that were previously respected and thought well of.

Background:

Red caps blue, gold intervenes (or attempts to) and spaces red flag. Red flag returns and reds cap. Blue and gold alternate nuking station 2, killing nobody. Eventually, as red attempts golds' flag, the interest in 2 dies down. However, Scuba Steve 9.0 remains spaced, and Roguelazer makes random runs in the sector.

What happened:
At this point, Scuba Steve 9.0 logs off, and a character named "Skrail" (40 score) comes online. He proceeds to demine the red flag and surrounding area in his bus. Roguelazer dresses him down for it, and he eventually logs off.

A few minutes later, Roguelazer logs off, and 5krail comes online (the names look familiar in the Vendetta text). He now is listening to the red say_team chat room. He and Scuba (not sure who is who, both are Skrail/5krail) ram me in my prom, both eventually dying.

Meanwhile, NT has its own share of demining. A character named "PITA" logs on, taunts the community, and demines gold. His identity is unknown.

Now, how do I know that these characters are, for sure, Scuba Steve 9.0 and Roguelazer? Well, whenever one logged off, a Skrail/5krail logged on immediately. When I accosted Skrail as he was demining and said "SCUBA!!!!!" he said ":-D." Later, Roguelazer would logoff Skrail/5krail and log on as Rogue, grab the red flag, logoff when I would get close, and log back in as Skrail/5krail.

What I want done:
My opinion is that these accounts should be locked and the characters deleted. We are here to test a game, not cheat in one. In Shadowbane and on blizzard.net, cheaters are rewarded with locked accounts. Vendetta's future MMORPG will probably have its share of cheaters as well.

Devs, we need guides on, but instead of yelling at me for saying "fscker," they should be dealing with the real cheaters, the ones who seek to exploit the game in the basest of ways. Maybe deleting the characters of these accounts might serve as warning enough to behave.

Some might say "jeez, take a little joke, will yah?" But cheating is no joke. If you want a joke, send me a "love ion," don't log on as my team and demine our flag and eavesdrop our team conversations.

I hope I represent the majority of the community on this subject, and would hope that John or someone would take action, pressed as they are with 3.2.6. I would rather see the update delayed _again_ than have this gameplay continue.
Jun 06, 2003 electric27 link
OHHHHH MAN I WAS SO PISSED! THOSE WERE MY MINES! Heh.
Jun 06, 2003 sheepdog link
Ive had some shit like this happen to me when i was the only gold protecting the flag against 4 hostiles, and i was doing well it was mined well and then some one logged on and started demining... i went insane.
Jun 06, 2003 Celebrim link
Well, I've been saying this for a long time. The solution is one account = one character.

Some people can't play nice, so everyone will have to suffer so that the game will be fair.
Jun 07, 2003 Suicidal Lemming link
No one here knows how much i would love to yell at people for cheating as a guide.*

Sigh, i can dream.

Edit:
* hrmm, that sentence reads a bit wrong, i mean i would like me to be able to be a guide and yell at people for cheating, hope thats a bit clearer
Jun 07, 2003 StarFreeze link
First off there is no such thing as "cheating".

They are "exploiting" problems that are currently with the game.

Why do people demine?

1. They just want to take the flag and make you go after it. Whats the fun of it just sitting there waiting to be taken? You lay 400 mines, who wants to sit there and demine them all while under attack? Since money is no real issue currently. You're not losing much when you get demined. A good defense is having a team sit with the flag and having just a few mines. This way it takes a bit longer but allows for a nice fight to go on.

2.(Reason I demine)...You fill sector 15 up with over 100+ mines, you annihilate any trader coming through...no warning. Now to me thats just you being a jack***. You blocking the biggest, most used trading sector in vendetta, and expect people to watch poor first time traders just get wiped out by your mines just because you claim it? A lot of these n00bs set 15 as thier home so that if they ever die they can go buyt that pizza cutter of theres and go back to trading. Wait a second, they can't leave why? Because even if they start turboing away. Here comes 2-3 valks on the side of the ship and annihilate it. What do you get out of it? 1 Kill, no cargo, and a pissed of n00b who yells and bitches about ppl like you.

3. People just like to piss each other off. Lets say I hate "Arolte" and I'm on the red nation. Now our team isn't capping but I hear over chat that "Arolte" has mined sc3 because blue is trying to cap. Now I've been killed by "Arolte" a few times and I am still pissed at him. So what can I do back in return? Waste his money, and just make him mad. Since blue is the one capping, he'll blame it on the blues and I go away free.

Now obiously demining has to be fixed in some way. At the same time there should be a radius around stations that you can't mine or station defenses that open fire on any mines that come near.
Jun 07, 2003 sheepdog link
though, SF, the trying to get back to exploiting late night gamers.
It is quite hard to run a defense with only one of your team online and four hostiles coming to take the flag, the only way to protect it is have at least 50+ mines. And i was holding off the flag for about 2 hours untill some one logged on and started demining flags. Reason 3 though SF could pose a problem, but thats just human nature to point fingers right away.
Jun 07, 2003 Arolte link
I'm with Celebrim. One character accounts. Stick with a frickin' nation and PLAY the frickin' game. Enough is enough.

For the record I too was a victim of a deminer. I was the only person defending the flag with mines one time (against BOTH Blue and Red I might add), and was doing quite well, until all of a sudden someone from the opposing team logged on under a Gold account and began demining. Let's face it guys, it's cheating. There's absolutely no way to justify it.

On the flipside I've also figured another possible exploit. It's sort of the opposite of demining. Make a character on the enemy's team. Let your own team know ahead of time what name you'll be under on the enemy's team. Grab your team's flag, under the enemy account, and keep it. That's it. Just get defense fire range and stay in one place safely. How is this an exploit? Well first of all this "spy" won't be capping the flag. They're holding it indefinitely. This will prevent the enemy team from capping the flag until the spy dies. Great, huh?

Oh well. I can't wait until CTF is out and missions are in. There's absolutely no motivation for me to help defend or capture flags anymore. There's no point to it anymore. Either you let the team with the most players capture your flag using swarm tactics, or you face being exploited on when you dare to put up a fight for defense. You're screwed both ways.
Jun 07, 2003 The Kid link
Not all for 1 character accounts, but 1 nations per account (therefore per person). I hate getting the flag demined.
Jun 07, 2003 ctishman link
I'm for one nation per account, though with the possibility of switching nations by deleting all of one's characters and starting from scratch. The ability to flit back and forth between teams at will just offers too much possibility for exploitation.
Jun 07, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
I would prefer one nation per account, but if newbieaccount you should be able to test them all out :D

cheers
Jun 07, 2003 Icarus link
I vote for One Account = One Character.
Jun 07, 2003 Celkan link
I think mines should only be able to be set off by the mine LAYER or members of another team. this would solve the problem, AND get rid of entirely the need for a one player, one acct system
Jun 07, 2003 Lin link
I've joined vendetta at least 3 weeks ago and i had a lot of fun. Since a few days i feel a little bit unhappy because of the increasing aggressiveness under the three nations.
Last night (ca. 0.30 h in Germany)a new golden name appears and i catched myself thinking, that this might be a "fake" - a red or blue under a golden "hat". This thought filled me with sorrow, but for me it's an advice, that something is going wrong in vendetta.

I vote, like some other before, for 1 account = 1 character.

cu
Linda (-:

P.S.: Sorry for my broken english, i'm no native speaker - and schooltime is long ago.
Jun 07, 2003 a1k0n link
Regarding one account/one character.

If we do this, then as has been mentioned by some unknown person, people will just make cloned accounts with garbage in the required fields. That annoys us, and steals a slot from someone else (user accounts are limited). Either way, the root of the problem is that a brand-new throwaway account can cause trouble.

There is a totally different solution to throwaway accounts (and newbie killing to some extent, but not really): The barrier to creating new characters needs to be high. One way to do this is with a fragmented universe where characters must undergo basic missions before they can actually join the greater online community. These missions would gently introduce new players to the game, and even vets wouldn't be able to complete them in under, say, a half hour. This would prevent on-the-fly demining, I think. So would disallowing teammates to blow up mines, but the issue goes deeper than that.

I'm sure this has been suggested already, but I haven't seen it in this thread.
Jun 07, 2003 Renegade ++RIP++ link
auch,

next time only hit once linda ;)

linda, but if you consider your own explanation, then one account = one nation could be a possibility to. I say this because I have 4 characters, 1 mainchar, a second for if I want to cruise around unknown, and 2 others as part of the guild. But they are all Itani.

cheers
Jun 07, 2003 roguelazer link
/me laughs his head off...

You really want my account deleted? I shot no mines... I did nothing at all. I wasn't even there long enough to spy. Did I post this thread when FurBall spied for an hour a month ago? No. But beyond that, let me post the story:

I logged in and was trading, managed even to escape some pirates successfully. Then red takes our flag. There are 3 blues and about 10 reds online, but only 8 reds are involved in the cap. We try to stop them, but I was in a Centurion, which cannot stop a force of 4 promys and assorted other ships. Then a gold (thank you very much, I am in your debt) named hachyiku takes the red flag and spaces it, we fight it out, but he gets killed and the reds cap. Right. At this point, I am zooming around in cheap ships in sc12 and 2, getting killed, and Scuba Steve 9.0 is in sector 2 waiting to cap, which he cannot do because of the 20 or 30 lightning mines surrounding everything down there, which BTW are immune to nuke explosions, something which bothers me. All of a sudden, I (currently out of radar range in sc2) watch with amusement as a character named PITA logs on gold and a character named Skrail logs on red. Both teams are very frustrated, as they are demined. I know I cannot cap, so I figure I'll have some revenge on red. I log in as 5krail (notice the number 5) and go to sector 12. Then I contact Skrail (notice the letter S) and ask him to ram Bacix Tenra with me. We confuse him for about 30 seconds, then he starts shooting at me. I am bored, so I give him the satisfaction of /explode'ing. I fly around for awhile, but that's too boring, so I log back on to Roguelazer. I sit there for awhile, and then all the reds leave, probably to bother "Skrail" in sector 12. I grab the flag, but since I'm bored to tears and unable to leave sc2, I drop it. I repeat once, then log off.

That's the extent of my exploits. Is it any worse than the deminers that blue sits through every time we mine the flag? No. I didn't even demine. Is it worse than the spies that echo everything in private chat to public chat? I think not.

What is my solution? I propose that, for two weeks after starting an account, one can create characters of any nation that they want, absolutely any. Then, the first time they login after the 2-week period, a box pops up asking them what nation they want to move to permanently. All of their characters are changed to that nation, and they only new characters that they can create must be of that nation.

But whatever. I've proposed this before with much resistance, I believe the argument against me was "It's a beta test, they need everybody on all the nations so it can work right". I never understood that phrase, and I still don't now. It doesn't even make sense grammatically! But devs, if you disbelieve me, or think my actions as I've stated them are bad enough to warrant account locking, it's your call. Do you need to make an example of me? Well, I'd rather you didn't, but you're the bosses. Just tell us whatever your decision is.


PS: When PITA logged in, both "." and pheer logged off. Make your own guesses based off that.

PPS: Can Bacix please detail what harm I caused him in my little bored-time? At all? Anything at all? Did I take his flag home? No, I returned it twice and gave every red online 1000c. Did I hurt his ship? With my magical FF ON bus, yes I did, right!!!

PPPS: I should leave this post now before the PS's overwhelm me! Hasta la vista! I'll be back! Mwuhahahahahhahahaaha
Jun 07, 2003 SirCamps link
Roguelazer, re-read my post, I believe I told your story truthfully. It was bad enough for you to come in and eavesdrop our chat. But my gripe is with Scuba.

I disagree with SF - mining is a very valid tactic that is a pretty good way of making sure your flag stays safe. And this wasn't 15, this was 2, and they were red mines. Scuba realized he wasn't going to get anywhere "honestly," so he gets on to cheat, enabling you to take the flag.

Solution: Make mines vulnerable only to avalon torpedoes. This stops the anonymous newbie from coming on with 0 money, and if anyone starts nuking our own mines, the character has money and will get blacklisted.

I also vote for the one character per account. Maybe once the game is finalized and commercialized, you could have people pay +$4 for a second account. Yes, that could be exploiting, but these people probably wouldn't pay actual money to be able to do it. It also solves the problem of a family playing the game (or siblings). If two brothers like to play, and the game is $10/month, they could pay $14 and get two characters. However, it would be under one account, so they cannot play at the same time. Still a nice feature, however.

Answering Rogue:

You caused absolutely no damage to me or mine, however, you aided in Scuba Steve's cheating (you could have nuked his bus as he demined, but you didn't). You even, after chastising him for switching to a red account to demine/eavesdrop, did the same.

Your actions were immature and foolish. Your "little-bored time" (is that correct English?) is meant to be spent some other way. The devs added CTF for our enjoyment. But dammit, if you're gonna cap, do it honestly. Your and Steve's actions were like those in a FPS when a character "gets under the map" and kills everyone while remaining invulnerable. In short, I was very disappointed at your deplorable actions, as I thought you had more in-game character.