Since you all seem mired in disfunction I'll solve your problems for you

[Force of Nature]

I think you guys are missing the point.. don't convince me or TWL to make people use non-staff names (something I support)... convince DocK and the deans of staff and everyone else on upper staff that thinks people should use their normal names. Personally I don't think it's much of an issue (LAST SEASON there were no reports of abuse, I have no information on seasons I wasn't involved in running) either way, but if you think it is... BTW smod powers don't stop you from being spected for lag, at least not in my experience, esp considering how many times 2dragons lagged out for elusive last season.

-Epi

No no epi you are missing the point. Unless I'm mistaken you can take powers away online ie the sysop can demote smods online.

If this is the case:

then have the bot which is a sysop demote the player who is staff WHILE they play the game and give it back after. In which case they dont need to change their name etc etc etc.

[Epinephrine]

No no epi you are missing the point. Unless I'm mistaken you can take powers away online ie the sysop can demote smods online.

If this is the case:

then have the bot which is a sysop demote the player who is staff WHILE they play the game and give it back after. In which case they dont need to change their name etc etc etc.

Dude, since you don't program and haven't thought this through completely I'll let you off the hook. But to properly do it the way you would like it, would be extremely hard to get right... and woudln't you rather have TWL start a month earlier than fix something which is more or less a non-issue?

-Epi

[Force of Nature]

Dude, since you don't program and haven't thought this through completely I'll let you off the hook. But to properly do it the way you would like it, would be extremely hard to get right... and woudln't you rather have TWL start a month earlier than fix something which is more or less a non-issue?

-Epi

You are joking right? Because I think you're assuming something which you dont know.

[Jason]

Haha, FoN sure as hell programs! He wrote the time race basing code for MatchBotR3. Not to mention, what he's proposing really wouldn't be that difficult to implement into the bot.

[Epinephrine]

Shrug, I vaguely remember FoN's old posts starting with "I don't program but I can imagine how this would be easy to add in..." or something to that effect. Guess I had him mixed up with someone, or he learned how to program in the past year.

Either way to properly do what he's asking:
1) Bot would have to automatically take powers away from rostered players who are part of the 2 squads in the game.
2) This includes players not squadjoined (making the bot have to check EVERY player that entered the arena).
3) Bot would have to give back powers to them once they LEFT the arena (more continuous checking).
4) Bot would have to keep a list of everyone in real time continously who lost powers, so that if the bot dies, this list can be found and the people can be restored.
5) Same as #4, keeping in mind server crashes.
6) In the event of catastrophic failure there needs to be additional backup ways to restore lost mod powers with a fully up to date and accurate list.

That's all the cases I can think of now, although there probably are a few I can't think of. Just to keep all that in track and working perfectly would take a bit of time to get right. Not impossible, but would take a lot of time (esp considering the people who make most of the bots don't have much time at all).

Now the problems with this system:
1) It takes time for powers to cycle through. Especially if we're also considering BanG powers for completeness, esp since that usually resets your password. From my experience depending on server lag, it can take up to 10 minutes for a name to get powers back. Personally I usually just log on and off until it works so I'm not 100% sure if powers will appear if you just stay in the game without logging out (which completely defeats the purpose of this).
2) Smod powers are password given, and thus smods will need new names, thus the logging in and out problems.
3) Players will be completely off staff chat. Even if they are not playing in the game and just watching (with no intent to sub). That means by default we'll lost a ton of staff during gametime which leads back to the original problem, that is unless you want them to stop watching games which sorta sucks.
4) Any sort of bot error will probably screw a lot of things up. Remember this isn't just a player score that screwed up or something. We're talking about a crapload of mods and smods suddenly powerless, and what if the sysops (or smods who have the power to) aren't around to correct the problem?
5) You need someone to dedicate their time to do this. Do you seriously want to delay TWL another month?

-Epi

[Jason]

Alright, how about this...

The bot does a check of each player added into the game as they are added. If the player has any powers at all, the bot locks 'em in spec and spits out a dandy little PM such as "Get off your staff name if you want to play, sparky."

Problem solved? :]

[Nickname]

I'll concur but only if they call the person sparky.

[Force of Nature]

Ok, lets both admit our merits and lack of knowledge.
I know more about bots and their workings
Epi knows more about staff structure and server commands. If I was actually working on this project I would take the time to understand the ones that are required.

Either way to properly do what he's asking:
1) Bot would have to automatically take powers away from rostered players who are part of the 2 squads in the game.

Why are you increasing the requirements? Before only the people who played has to be on a different name. So only the people who are playing or subbing needs to be considered. These are already kept track of because you add players. The bot also knows who is staff and who is not because it has to keep track of the people who can use it. So this is already implemented as well. All you have to do is (if player playing is staff demote <- server command i presume)

2) This includes players not squadjoined (making the bot have to check EVERY player that entered the arena).

Same reasoning as above. First you can't add ppl who aren't squadjoined anyway. Plus bot already knows all the staff members.

3) Bot would have to give back powers to them once they LEFT the arena (more continuous checking).

The was the whole point. Secondly, you are thinking checking is a bad think. The bot acts as a client for the server. It already checks for everything. This checking is already implemented.

4) Bot would have to keep a list of everyone in real time continously who lost powers, so that if the bot dies, this list can be found and the people can be restored.

This isn't that hard. There are many many applicatoins where you write to files. This would be one. For someone coding, writing a txt file with names of people who have their powers taken off is a trivial task.

5) Same as #4, keeping in mind server crashes.

Same as above.

6) In the event of catastrophic failure there needs to be additional backup ways to restore lost mod powers with a fully up to date and accurate list.

Same as above?

Now the problems with this system:
1) It takes time for powers to cycle through. Especially if we're also considering BanG powers for completeness, esp since that usually resets your password. From my experience depending on server lag, it can take up to 10 minutes for a name to get powers back. Personally I usually just log on and off until it works so I'm not 100% sure if powers will appear if you just stay in the game without logging out (which completely defeats the purpose of this).

Why do we need to take away BanG access anyway? It has nothing to do with abusing powers that would advantage your team. If the mod is abusing his privallages I think staff are mature enough to kick him of staff. No need to implement BanG.
The powers cylcling depends on when the server reads the settings file. There is a delay after you add players anyway. This can be used to minimize the time.

2) Smod powers are password given, and thus smods will need new names, thus the logging in and out problems.

You cant demote smods online? Or are you saying you can demote but they have to relogon for the settings to take effect?

3) Players will be completely off staff chat. Even if they are not playing in the game and just watching (with no intent to sub). That means by default we'll lost a ton of staff during gametime which leads back to the original problem, that is unless you want them to stop watching games which sorta sucks.

I thought this was desired so they don't influence calls of cheater etc on them? Plus the only players are the people who are playing. If you implement what I was thinking all along.

4) Any sort of bot error will probably screw a lot of things up. Remember this isn't just a player score that screwed up or something. We're talking about a crapload of mods and smods suddenly powerless, and what if the sysops (or smods who have the power to) aren't around to correct the problem?

Go back to all your backup senarios before in the implementation. I don't think all the smods will be playing all at the same time very often. That is like saying we shouldn't have nuclear generators on spacecrafts because I mean there could be a chance of an explosion. omgomgomg

5) You need someone to dedicate their time to do this. Do you seriously want to delay TWL another month?
-Epi

Still, I think you're exaggerating.

[Fit of Rage]

Do you seriously want to delay TWL another month?

It's not like things are going very quickly as is. We're still waiting for that TWD reset, much less TWD bots to get back online.

[Cig Smoke]

Ya + we got the what 1-2 month wait till they pick TWL teams after the reset. Im sure in that amount of time which will be another 2-3 months yet we can impliment this into the TWL bots which dont have nething to do w/ the TWD bots rite?

[Epinephrine]

FoN,

If what you're asking for is demoting of people only participating in games, I am not quite sure at all what the point of that is.

There is absolutely nothing a mod can do while playing (rather than spectating) that can possibly help them in a game situation. If the purpose of this is to just stop game players, there's no point, since if people are cheating as staff, they can get their friends in spec on their squad to use staff commands to do various things (including banning opposing players for one sec then removing it so that that guy 'lags out' or something).

As for smods, I want to be very clear that to the best of my knowledge smods do not have any super powers that let them stay inside the game past the lag limits. Thus, they too do not have any special powers that give them ANY advantages in the game (other than blatent abuse of powers like mods would do, which would require taking away all powers from spectators too). I also want to be very clear that smods have a special password that they log into the zone with that grants them extra powers. To take these powers away requires the smod to log in and out. And yes, from experience I'd say there usually aren't that many smods who are online and not afk (usually at most 4), and if they are powerless, then boom. And sysops? They don't play in the leagues, and I doubt they ever will.

So if you're asking to just remove powers from people in the game, that's a moot point. There was a time when mod powers meant you could see other people's lag on your screen (a feature everyone now has), and could also mean you could bypass the res restriction if you weren't afraid of being caught (now locked out). It also gave free reign for really abusive staff to use commands such as *kill to 'lag out' players on the opposing team during opportune times, or lag out their own players, among other powers. That too is no longer useful because of the constant logging on staff powers which would immediately result in a forfeit of the game, and firing of that staff member.

Other than a cosmetic show of good faith, there would be no point in this. I think that if that was the only reason, then it's not reason enough to add this, especially since it isn't already easily added (by banning people using staff names and make them use other names) because of upper staff resistance.

Oh and yes I know what I'm talking about FoN. Unlike you, I have access to the databases, and to the bot code and so on. I have spent hours and hours editing and fixing errors manually in the database because of bot error and I know how amazingly complex it is (at least to get right). Why database? We can't just write a text file, it doesn't work that way... that and things need to be relationally tied to games and so on. I was around (and helping with test cases) when 2d was debugging the bots last season, esp for the game restore feature (so that if the server crashed we could resume games), and also have talked to 2d many times about checking of things. Basically checking continously slows things down and begets errors unless done absolutely correctly which does take time. Even with what we thought were perfectly debugged bots last season, I think anyone who saw them in action saw all the weird bugs we had for the first few rounds we used them.

-Epi

[KJW]

All staff command powers used are logged, plus there are alerts sent to the powers that be, who do investigate them. One of the fastest ways to be removed from staff, is by abusing their staff powers.

I don't really see any reason to remove staff members power while they play in any games.

Let's just get the games going so everyone can meet people from all over the world and then blow them up! The FuN is about to begin...... again!

[Cylor]

Bring back three rounds. Thanks.

[Force of Nature]

I'm sorry I was led to believe that was the problem as I would wonder along with a lot of others as well. Atleast something has good has come of of this line of arguments.

But now there is no need to worry. Epi has given his word that if there is any abuse, Upperstaff will take good care of it. So I think we can leave our faith in the hard work of the staffers and not worry about the problem one bit.

Viva le Staff!

[Jeansi]

To me, that all just sounds like a good place for the games to get fucked up because of bot bugs.