Cheater Thread at CIV2 PBEM Forum

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Man, lots of posts while I was writing that last one...

Knowing that someone was arrested for stealing cars is different from knowing how to break into the car to steal it. You don't need to know what steps they took to perfrom that illegal action, just that what they did was illegal. If we want to start another thread on the debates of posting the actual ways to cheat, I'm all for it it and will fight it to my last breath.

As for the recent example of the Overlord. If the Mods knew that the Overlord was a DL for I-M then the DL should have been banned. Then it wouldn't have been an issue. That's following forum rules.

As far as new players knowing about cheaters..... Is one new person and a cheater going to have a PBEM game? I doubt it, most PBEM games involve at least three people, usually 4 or more. And I'm sure that as soon as someone noticed that the new player was even talking about playing a new game with a cheater he would find out about it from someone else.

 

[Darius]

Originally posted by conmcb25
Lets say it is 6 months from now. I remember Ohwell cheated but I dont remember the details. So I go to the list because he just got into a PBEM Im in and I look at the circumstances of his cheating incident by following the links to the thread. And I read the thread and remember in my opinion anyway that Ohwell did not handle the incident well. Well thats enough for me Im not going to play with him. Then someone else like Eivind, who when caught admitted it aplogized and asked everyones forgiveness. Now I would probally do a PBEM with him. So you see there can be ways to use the list. Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware!

YES!!! You put it perfectly, this is about nothing more than having important information like that free and accessible to the players and game starters, and let them make their own judgements. Freedom of information.

 

[germanos]

Originally posted by Darius

That's absolutely apples and oranges and you know it.

Frankly Darius, I do not agree.

I think that what the PBEM community needs is a set of 'rah-rules', so to speak.

I have read the 'rah-rules' at Poly, and I have read the 'Great Library' as well, when I finally discovered the Civ2 community on the net.

When I did, I found out many ways to 'fool' the program, and thus, in my point of view (and as I learned by reading it, in the eyes of many), to cheat if I were to play human opponents instead of the stupid AI.

Reading those entries, I strongly felt I was joining an honourable and respectable community, and it was clear to me I would not use the 'cheats' whenever playing MP.

Experiencing the difficulties of MP (time-zones, commitment), I turned to PBEM instead. Unfortunately, cheating is even easier in PBEM than it is in MP.
I haved had my fare share of cheating in PBEM's, and the more I see of it, the more I get convinced, that putting the cheats in the open, as the Great Library in Poly did, will make better ways of playing PBEM's with trustworthy players, then that putting a blacklist of players will.

A blacklist of 'cheats' will bring better results, then a list of players cheating, without specifying what cheating is.

What we need is a list of 'Gentleman behaviour', to paraphrase your own words, instead of a list of crooks.

Why is it not possible in the PBEM community to say: we play by these rules, you can find out the how and why HERE, and if you don't agree, stay out of this game.

Unfortunately I have to say again: So far we have NOT been doing a great job in keeping this PBEM games a good sport.

Last but not least, I want to say that I don't want to 'threadjack' here to reinstate a thread on cheats, but what I DO want to say is that unless WE players take a more mature way of dealing with cheats and cheaters (and so far we have been putting our heads in the sand like an Ostrich in both instances), there is no hope of getting cheating out of the PBEM community.

 

[Darius]

I'm not even going to finish reading that post; if you want to start a new thread about posting cheat methods feel free to do so.

 

[Darius]

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
The only positive I see from the blacklist is that it would let new players know who has already cheated, but if the cheating player is no longer around, why would they need to know? Then it would be the Mods job to watch for DL's of the cheater. That's the key. Catch them cheating, don't let them play in new games and then if they create a DL, they are now breaking forum rules and will be banned.

Exactly, as I have said numerous times here and at Apolyton. It is a public database which mods and players can use to catch DLs, and which game organizers and/or players can use to determine whether or not a convicted cheater should be allowed to play in their game. This is just INFORMATION, people!

Originally posted by Duke of Marlbrough
As far as new players knowing about cheaters..... Is one new person and a cheater going to have a PBEM game? I doubt it, most PBEM games involve at least three people, usually 4 or more. And I'm sure that as soon as someone noticed that the new player was even talking about playing a new game with a cheater he would find out about it from someone else.

There have been, are, and forever will be games composed mainly of newbies, and a cheater (either with their normal name or a DL) looking for the game would target such a game as someone wouldn't know who they are. Look at this thread for instance, do you think anyone in that game has intricate knowledge of all past cheaters as you or I would? Absolutely not, hence the reason for making information on past cheaters readily available in a list with links.

 

[Aravorn]

Originally posted by Darius
I'm not even going to finish reading that post; if you want to start a new thread about posting cheat methods feel free to do so.

Im taking bets on how long that thread will last!

 

[SunTzu]

For everyone's information, TF closed the thread due to pressure from the rest of the staff, who most of them hell maybe all of them aren't even PBEMers, hence they don't know what the **** they're talking about.
This isn't an elitist list, this is telling people to be careful when letting a player who is a known cheater into your PBEM.
As always a decesion was made because of pressure by people who aren't even in this issue, plus a mod threatened to quit ect.
I can't think of any PBEMs that are being played in by a staff member other than myself.
80% of PBEM players want the list, we have 12 people who want it at the PBEM forum.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Originally posted by Darius
Elibb at Civfanatics was caught cheating in a game by Duke of Marlbrough. Rather than making it public, DoM and Kobayashi kept it secret and let him continue to play. He played in 4+ games, was caught cheating, and it killed all of them. Had his cheating been made public, the players in those games could have chosen for themselves, and it is likely that in some of them he wouldn't be allowed to play. But instead numerous fun games had to die without them even having a choice. Does that sound right to you? Huh?

Back then there was no process to follow, no one knew what 'should' be done. It was new ground. It took several weeks just to even get a process down where the game could be checked. By the time it was checked and confirmed he was already going in the new games. What would have it being made public at that point have done? I don't think it would have changed anything. But, again, there was no precedence to follow. What was the best path to take? We learned from that that it was not the correct path, hence it changed.

Another example, DoM is doing some DL checks at my request, by comparing the IP's of suspects to 'known cheaters'. However it turned out that he didn't know all the known cheaters, so I referred him to the list.

True, I didn't know about the Poly cheaters. However, that also seems to fall under the 'don't bring your other forum problems to this forum' idea. Otherwise, someone would need to go to every Civ2 site, find out who their cheaters were and watch for them. That ain't going to happen.

 

[Thunderfall]

How about this:

When a cheater is confirmed, SunTzu can PM me and I will remove access to the PBEM/MP forums for that cheater so he can't view the PBEM/MP forums. If the cheater then creates DLs, we'll consider perm banning the poster.

 

[Aravorn]

Originally posted by Thunderfall
How about this:

When a cheater is confirmed, SunTzu can PM me and I will remove access to the PBEM/MP forums for that cheater so he can't view the PBEM/MP forums. If the cheater then creates DLs, we'll consider perm banning the poster.

Hmmmm this is interesting Tf I will ponder and return.

 

[Chieftess]

That sounds like a good compremise for all of the competative 'venues'.

 

[SunTzu]

There's only one side, the side of the majority of PBEMers that want the 'past non-regular play database' or the Blacklist of PBEM cheaters, and those that don't know what they're talking about who don't participate in PBEMs. Now if the rest of you staff members who voiced your opinion about the list were actually in PBEMs, then i would add u to the 20% who don't want the list.
One reason i am fighting for the list is because of the temper-tantrum that have been thrown in the past just to get TF to perma-ban someone, now if the list was kept in place until EVERYONE was heard, not just the voices of power that don't have business in the PBEMs, then maybe this would be cool. But a decision was made without hearing the majority of PBEMers who want the list, its a good thing. Its a damn good thing.
Oh and Duke, i guess u can call this a holy crusade, and for your information i live on my high horse.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

I know Sun, I know...... If only you knew how to go about it better I could support you more.

I commend conmcb25 for making this thread, that actually allowed some progress to happen.

 

[Yop73]

How about this: When a cheater is confirmed, SunTzu can PM me and I will remove access to the PBEM/MP forums for that cheater so he can't view the PBEM/MP forums. If the cheater then creates DLs, we'll consider perm banning the poster.

I don't think that would be a good idea. Because some cheaters swear off the cheating, but want to play again in PBEM's.
I don't think someone should get banned from the PBEM forum, just because he made 1 mistake.
Everybody should deserve a second chance, in my opinion, ...

P.S. I'm a PBEM-er too

EDIT: changed some words, fixed the quote-thing

 

[SunTzu]

what better way?
The majority want the BLACKLIST!, just because a very few PBEMers don't want it, and then non-pbemers who shouldn't even be in this arguement say they don't want it, doesn't mean that we shouldn't have it.
The Majority wants it, and we should get it

 

[Darius]

Yop, I'm sure if a past cheater wanted to join a game, you could just PM Thunderfall and he would lift the restriction, so there's no problem.

 

[Yop73]

Maybe not, but it gets way more complicated than just don't ban the cheater, which I think is the right thing to do.
Otherwise, it would take again a few days to unban the cheater, taking up valuable game-time etc.
And if the cheater wants to play a PBEM, and he can't access the forum, how does he know if there is a place open, or if the other people want him, and how does he have to convince them if he can't access the forum.
It would become way too complicated for the cheater who wants and deserves a second chance, if he promises not to do it again.

Yop

 

[Thunderfall]

If you PBEM players think a cheater deserves a second chance, then simply tell SunTzu don't PM the name of that cheater to me and he will not be ban from the PBEM forum. It's that simple. It takes me only a few seconds to change it.

I really think this is a better way than setting up a public cheaters list. The same rule can apply to demo game cheaters.

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

Sun, just becasue there's an idea that people like doesn't mean it's the best one.

So, what people are saying is that the Blacklist at Poly stops cheaters? There have been no new cheaters there since they started it? Nope.

They are saying that it's an idea they saw and they can't come up with anything better? Come on. We got some smart people that can think of a better way to solve this.

I don't know why someone would be so married to this one idea that they would threaten other people or never visit CFC anymore.

 

[Darius]

Let me try to redirect the debate as I have tried before: the argument here isn't whether or not a blacklist stops cheaters. It's nothing but speculation on both sides.

The argument is whether or not it is worth deleting. If you have other alternate solutions, fine. Lets put ALL of them into place, or none of them for all I care. I only want to know why the thread will be deleted should anyone choose to post it.