Distension discussion

[DankNuggets]

not to mention someone with a vendetta could make a similar sounding alias to induce ?cheater calls. don't do this either please.

example:
dako hates cheese! and creates the alias cheese? to get a lot of people ?cheater calling him.



but that would be completely retarded (you, yourself would be aliasing and would get banned) so don't do it.

[Peace_Maker]

For the record if someone thinks they could get around aliasing by exiting the game when a higher staff comes into the arena...they do not have to be in the arena to alias check. I imagine if someone is aliasing it will be found out rather quickly because so many players will be reporting it. I am afraid this could lead to a rash of unwarranted accusations. For the sake of the process please be conservative in reports. If to many people are falsely reported I think the staffers that have to check aliases will become discouraged and not want to take the calls.

[Stabwound]

In an interesting turn of events:

(MessageBot)>2009 Feb 4 12:24PM (distension) qan: UPDATE: Creating altnicks to cheat other players out of queue slots will no longer be tolerated. If you're caught, you may be banned from Dist. ?msg me if you need to move ships over from alt

Anyone caught aliasing will have both accounts banned from Distension. Please report any suspected aliasing to myself or another Distension op.

Have a nice day!

[DankNuggets]

much appreciated

as usual, we will sit back and spark a blunt or two, and wait for qan to come riding in and fix everything. i really can't fault someone for volunteering in their own time, so if it's just a case of being patient then that's what it is. I know it's probably annoying to have to say "sorry, we just have to wait for qan" but it's the truth.




In the mean time:

People please don't be jackasses and play multiple accounts. They may not want to make it a rule until they can enforce it, but it will most likely be one.

Frightful was overly apologetic last night for starting all this mess, so we'd better not see "not frightful" or "possibly frightful" around anymore if you want to be taken seriously (and given amnesty if they eventually make it an bannable offense).

You want to play it so bad, let others play it too.

[Stabwound]

No higher up staff would ever agree to a 1-year TW ban for violating a Distension rule- especially one difficult/sketchy to prove is even being violated. It could, however, be a permanent Distension ban on both aliases.

sigh..


Not sure why you are claiming only a "distension op/player" can do general staff tasks in the distension arena.. what if someone was using ce or hacking?
If there is such a stupid rule it should be removed/altered.

I explained it in the previous reply. If someone doesn't play Distension, they're going to have no idea who plays using what aliases, and there is no readily available way to check that via bot/database.

Oh and I think it is kinda funny that you criticise the level of discernment needed for this, when you happily support the idea of YOU being able to judge whether people have "abused" the assist system...

This is for the same reason as above. Because there is no bot/database method of checking up on Distension aliases (at the moment). Judging whether someone has abused the assist system is obviously not an objective thing, but it's usually quite obvious as there are a few serial offenders. For the record, I have never banned a single person, although a few people have been warned via PM.

Your idea would work if bot work was done to accommodate Distension alias checking for operators, and that, admittedly, would be trivial for someone like qan. If that were the case, though, it could probably go a step farther and just automatically disallow multiple accounts to login during that Distension session going by macid/ip along with the op alias checking to catch anyone that bypasses that. To be honest, I'll suggest this to him. The rule would have to be "no aliases whatsoever" though. Now that I think of it, the sibling thing probably wouldn't matter at all if it only logged aliasing per session; what are the chances of two siblings playing Distension one after the other in the same 2-hour session? Not very likely.

I also asked him to fix the command that raises the player limit, because it could probably handle being higher. It's just a shame that he's so busy and doesn't have a lot of time to do anything Distension-related.

Look, I'll agree that the whole thing is annoying and should be against the rules. The thing is, people are bitching and whining at me to do something about it NOW, which I am powerless to do without alias checking power. I apologize for getting a bit pissy about it, but some people have just been straight up dicks about it. This alias thing wouldn't be much of an issue if the queue worked correctly (and it doesn't) and if the player limit wasn't so severely cut back. Believe me, I've been trying to get qan to work on it, but he's been showing up once a week or less and it's a pain in the ass.

[dako]

How hard would it be to have DBot (or another bot) put each player's alias on a listserv when it enters the arena, matches it to an IP address (read: twdbot), adds the alias + IP to a list, and sorts it by IP address. Then, anyone with power can just look at the list at any point and if there's two IP addresses with different aliases, bam.

[DankNuggets]

Alias check for TWD- is it a bot coded thing or does someone only do it for complaints?

When a new name is registered with the Dbot, why not put it on a list to be checked for existing machine IDs/ips/etc ?

It doesn't have to be an automatic process that eats up bandwith, it could be done periodically by an OP. I mean there can't be that many aliases registering each day. Once or twice a week would be enough to catch anyone.

Or, make a list of people accused, and check it. I think this isn't nearly as big a deal as it's being made out to be, soley based on the availability of the alias-checker. I understand only a few people can do it, but how long does it take once they get around to it? Right now, we only have like 3 people who are accused, how long could it possibly take to verify that? Not how long as in the wait for someone to do it, but how long it physically takes to do. I say this because it's not something that needs immediate attention: let them alias for a week, then when you get around to it, ban them for it.

Like Tagmor said, if you make it a rule and threaten them with 1yr/perma ban, there's no way they'd risk it. The workload would be very managable. Once a week you'd have to send an email to the OP with alias checking powers, they'd spend 10-15 mins checking them and responding, then you'd spend another 1 minute putting them on the ban list.

It might take a week, yes, but it's not a week of work, it's a week of waiting. And as long as we have a queue/limit, it is well worth it to enforce the limit as it's meant to be done (per person, not alias).

It may be whining, but it's warranted. This could potentially ruin the game for a lot of people. Very few people are cotent with their current playing time (if they get any) and a select greedy few are boxing them out of what little time they can get.

and you don't seem too concerned.

are you waiting for imput from qan? otherwise I'd say go ahead and make the rule, even if you have to wait a week to be able to enforce it. there is a point to having a rule you can't enforce, if you can eventually enforce it and are earnest about doing so.

[TagMor]

sigh..

Many flaws with this idea:
First of all, there are only a handful of players that can alias check, and from memory, only one of them is a Distension op and player.

Not sure why you are claiming only a "distension op/player" can do general staff tasks in the distension arena.. what if someone was using ce or hacking?
If there is such a stupid rule it should be removed/altered.

How is Dameon Angell going to know that this is actually being done to abuse the queue system? How would he know that the alias "Tagmor" is even used to play Distension? There's also the chance it could be a sibling or legitimate alias. DA doesn't keep up to date on Distension players, and therefore has no idea if the player is aliasing illegally or not.

So the bot doesnt keep a list of registered players? All DA or whoever needs to do is enter arena, alias check, then record the list of alias' for investigation. Which can be done at a later point, and by some staff lacky.. like yourself. As for siblings, they could follow a similiar procedure to TWD. I'm not really sure what you mean by "legitimate alias"?.. Someone who just wants to use a different name?.. Well fuck them, it is against the rules.. Just like in TWD.

Oh and I think it is kinda funny that you criticise the level of discernment needed for this, when you happily support the idea of YOU being able to judge whether people have "abused" the assist system...

I know you'll probably want to insult and scream at me again

Let's say "Tagmor" is aliasing as "Whiner381"

who is insulting who?

[Stabwound]

This is the best way of enforcing a 1 alias rule:

1. Let everyone know that there is a rule of 1 alias per person, and the punishment for breaking this rule is severe. Something like 1 year ban.

2. Make the community regulate it by reporting suspected aliased players through the ?cheater system. When staff recieve such a cheater call, a mod with alias checking powers, comes to distension and investigates the suspect.

I can guarantee that if this is implemented, no one will dare to alias and the punishment will probably never have to be enforced.
Even if their are times when no mods with alais powers are available, people still wont dare to risk it.

Many flaws with this idea:

First of all, there are only a handful of players that can alias check, and from memory, only one of them is a Distension op and player.

Secondly, how is a random staffer going to know if the player is illegally aliasing? There is absolutely no way for them to know if this is the case or not. Are they to just automatically believe the person doing the ?cheater call?

Let's say "Tagmor" is aliasing as "Whiner381" and playing in Distension to get around the queue system. Someone does a cheater call on Whiner381 saying that he is Tagmor on an alias, and Dameon Angell comes into the arena. How is Dameon Angell going to know that this is actually being done to abuse the queue system? How would he know that the alias "Tagmor" is even used to play Distension? There's also the chance it could be a sibling or legitimate alias. DA doesn't keep up to date on Distension players, and therefore has no idea if the player is aliasing illegally or not. And no, word of mouth doesn't count. This would only be possible with further bot work, and if that was the case it would be easier to just implement some type of auto detection based on machine id/ip address.

I know you'll probably want to insult and scream at me again, but try thinking about this first.

[TagMor]

This is the best way of enforcing a 1 alias rule:

1. Let everyone know that there is a rule of 1 alias per person, and the punishment for breaking this rule is severe. Something like 1 year ban.

2. Make the community regulate it by reporting suspected aliased players through the ?cheater system. When staff recieve such a cheater call, a mod with alias checking powers, comes to distension and investigates the suspect.

I can guarantee that if this is implemented, no one will dare to alias and the punishment will probably never have to be enforced.
Even if their are times when no mods with alais powers are available, people still wont dare to risk it.

[roxxkatt]

We haven't had a problem (ironically enough) since someone started the "someone in staff forcing the crashes" rumor.

that was me, and its not a rumor.
and no, notice no troubles...

The other night, there was a 12v12 with more than 20 people in spec.

there was 30 today.
there was a queue for refitting mode =\

[Ivan]

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[McVicar]

Edit: Heres the aliases I know of....

Tagmor - Soho Princess
Avatar Hero - Avatar_Hero
Frightful - Not Frightful - Possibly Frightful

Lizard Fuel - Alaskan

[roxxkatt]

i just got the end round queue-add, then the instant-remove, something must be wrong...

12v12 sucks!

This issue has been brought to stabwounds attention both in game, and on forum, but I'm going to elaborate....

More and more people are starting to abuse the queue system. Granted they have to start from scratch with their new name, but it prevents anyone that has invested more than 60 minutes on any given day from playing again...I played 57 minutes this afternoon, and cant even get out of spec for the night session. This is ridiculous. Based solely on my aggravated point of view, we have a couple options on how to fix this....

1. We can start slowly re raising the player limits...12 vs 12 is lame....16 vs 16 would be better, like 2 ?go base games.

2. We can have a code in Dbot logging each players unique machine ID to prevent the same person playing twice in the same session (Playing 2 seperate session could be ok)

I dunno, too frustrating to elaborate more...

Edit: Heres the aliases I know of....

Tagmor - Soho Princess
Avatar Hero - Avatar_Hero
Frightful - Not Frightful - Possibly Frightful