The mods do not always respond to forum posts on subjects like this.

You would be better off emailing: [email protected]

Lots of the time they do reply so I will keep checking this thread for a response.

I think "cancel" is a more accurate and fair result than "draw" in these kinds of situations. Right true draws are only true power draws.

Why is cancel a fair way of doing it, if someone was defeated why should they get money. Surely people who have survived should get the money. Also if they could figure out a way for the 'cheaters' draw money to be spread amongst the survivors

You realise that webDip points don't have an acutal cash value, right? They are of no monetary worth. You will not get rich playing Diplomacy.

That's only for Edi Birsan.

I know I just meant web dip coins not cash

Anyway, the main reason games with serious cheating problems are cancelled is because there's a risk that legitimate players would *not* have been defeated if cheating was not happening in the game. Thus, to force them to retain that defeat on their record is unfair. The only way to avoid this problem is for such a tainted game to be cancelled.

For example, imagine I'm Austria in a gunboat game. I get defeated quite early due to a combined attack from Turkey and Italy who seem to have an uncanny ability to co-ordinate their moves perfectly.

Later it turns out that Turkey and Italy were both controlled by the same person, using two accounts, which is against the rules.

Is it fair for that "defeat" to remain on my record? No, of course it isn't.

Could the mods make a special rule that it becomes and SoS draw, points wise but defeated players get there coins back and for all intents and purposes the game is cancelled.

Does that make sense?

So all the mods have to do is cancel the game and then give SoS draw points manually

Yes a bit of a pain, but much fairer

No, cancelling the game is fairer - a game with serious cheating is a ruined game.

Again. For all intents and purposes the game is cancelled however th players who survived are given their points. If the cheaters weren't thick they would've coordinated their attacks to make sure noone else got big and so it is a feat worth extra points if you survive and do well. No?

What we do at the end of an investigation is not one-size-fits all. Mostly, we cancel games because of the reasons outlined above. A game with cheaters is tainted and shouldn't count. Eliminated players were not eliminated fair and square, so the loss should not count on their record. When only the cheaters have been removed, we occasionally offer the remaining players to draw.

All of the mods are players themselves, so we very much try to not punish good apples for the few bad ones. But it's simply not possible to avoid cancelling games (and nullifying players' efforts) in all cases.

Thanks for yur response, however I feel ifuyou were to treat it as a cancelled game, as said above and gave survivors extra points the defeated players records nor points would be tainted or stolen

Imagine the previous scenario provided, where Italy and Turkey are in tandem because they are controlled by ones user. In this game, Russia would also be weakened because of their alliance and thus lose points, while Britain would gain from this and win points.

You are arguing that Britain should keep his earnings, but any kind of cheating can have devestating effects on the entirety of the board. Not only should the nearly dead countries be refunded via cancel, the winning country/countries must be only refunded their bet, or else they've gained free points. The end scenario WOULD come out to: some people got extra points because someone cheated, while others didn't.

This makes no sense, and thus we cancel games ( though I would be in support of splitting the cheater's money upon the rest, as reparations for their time being wasted)

^ this is entirely correct.

Also, distributing manually is an enourmous hassle. It may sound easy to just distribute points by a cheater automatically, but the way cancels are treated technically actually makes this quite a project. Lots of (voluntary) hours on something which may be an incremental improvement.

With limited volunteers, most of the dev decisions we need to make are not based on 'what is a good idea?' but on 'what should we spend our time on to make the most impact?'

In that vein: to anybody who knows a bit of coding, please mail us on [email protected] if you want to lend a hand.

@Couger:

Imagine you're in a Texas Hold-Em poker tournament and you pay $100 to enter. You get knocked out early by a player who just seems to have unbelievably good luck. Later in the tournament that player is revealed to have been cheating and you were eliminated because of it. Would you be satisfied that those players that weren't eliminated would be paid more than you, or that you would get less than the your original $100 back?

How about refunding each non-cheating player his or her bet, and dividing the bets by the cheater player(s) amongst the non-cheaters according to the scoring system (ppsc/wta/sos)? Still, coding this might take time, which should maybe not be a priority, but if it's easy to do, why not?

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is the effect of an unexpected interruption to a game. Most of the time, games will be force paused at least 3 days to account for the amount of time we allow for players to respond. Add to that the time for a conversation with one or more players to resolve and you've got yourself a pretty significant interruption to the flow of a game, even if players are ultimately found to be not guilty. In this case, there's no way for us to guarantee that all players on the board would not only return on time, but care about the game as much. Canceling is the best approach here as well.

"How about refunding each non-cheating player his or her bet, and dividing the bets by the cheater player(s) amongst the non-cheaters according to the scoring system (ppsc/wta/sos)?"

This was already detailed above as to why we don't/won't do this. When two players are cheating on a board, they are affecting the outcome for every other country for reasons that have already been addressed. If France and Austria are multis, and France attacks Italy immediately, why should England be rewarded because he got to take all the undefended French centers?

Italy would get all of his points back, so everyone so no reason to complain. Even though France/Austria are cheating, England still managed to take the French centers before Germany did, and defended himself from Russia in the meantime. You could argue that that's worth points.

Or, let's say France/Austria are multi-ing but Italy mounts an incredible defense and actually survives which France/Austria are eaten by England/Turkey, and he gets some part of Austria as well before it the cheaters are revealed. I'd be pretty annoyed if then the game gets cancelled and all records of my defense are removed.

I agree that this isn't a priority, so if it takes long as TMOW suggested, we don't need to discuss it.

@bas,

I can tell you from handling close to 2,000 cases that if I had spent the time doing a careful analysis of every game with cheating to the level of detail you're describing to figure out exactly how the game would play out, or if the game was impacted *enough* by cheating to cancel then I wouldn't have gotten anything done.

When it comes down to it, if people are cheating in the game the integrity of the game is just ruined. If anyone got a defeat in the game it's unfair to them. Peoples alliances are different then they should have been, time has been wasted waiting for the cheaters to be removed, which hurts the games momentum. Most investigations take a long time, so games can sit for days-weeks sadly. With everything combined, it is just a lot more fair in general to cancel.

Now all that said, I made sure to build in an appeal process for games where people want to keep playing into the rules, and that hasn't been changed since I stepped down from the team. See the rule page:

"We will consider cancelling games when there are 2 or more multis in the same game and they had a considerable effect on the game as a whole. We will encourage the remaining players to cancel on their own. If they do not, we will ask for an explanation. We will determine if the explanation is warranted and either leave it alone or force cancel with an explanation. If no players have been eliminated the remaining players may choose to draw the game before it is cancelled."

So if everyone does want to continue they can email and ask for the game to not be cancelled, and the mods will make a ruling on whether it's fair to let it continue or not.

As a player, I will always advocate cancel if there's an NMR or CD, so I'm personally very much fine with cancelling games where players have cheated. I figured my solution could make the skiing cougar happy :)

That said with the addition of non-ranked would it be an option to allow the players to unanimously decide if they with to continue as a non ranked game? I know certain other sites do it, and it at least allows players to keep playing an interesting, if tainted game.

To clarify I meant as an in general policy, not in this specific instance.

welcome to the site, Hastati. you seem so comfortable here. :)

Your name seems familliar. You aren't a FUMBBLr by chance are you?

no, idont think so....i dont do gibberish

Ah well then must be someone else. FUMBBL is the site for online blood bowl, the tabletop Warhammer Football Game. Yes, they made a football game based on warhammer fantasy, and it's amazing.

awesome, still dont know what that is. Hope you enjoy it