What could be done about cheating hosts?

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Zepherian
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by Zepherian »

A medal system is needed so people can do their own matchmaking. There is no need for automatchmaking if the medal system is solid. There will always be a few exploits, even with encryption, but I think it is easier to make a working medal system than to get all sweaty and bothered coding an automatchmaking system. People like to chose their opponents. As it is now it dosen't serve this purpose, although a lot of people think it does and newbies will seek out pacifiers while ranked people will seek out other ranked people. The problem is that we will find a few rank abusers in the mix who have a false depiction of rank because of how the ranking system works.

I know its a bag of worms, but what if rank was updated in game based on unit kill loss ratios and structures destroyed, taking into account the rank of the other player?

Imo what is needed is to improve the ingame chat, giving the game some profanity censorship and a lobby chat feature and make the medal system work. Also, for chronic cheating hosts some form of moderator figure would help and a temporary IP ban could be applied if enough people complained, so as to correct certain unsocial behaviours. That in itself requires the moderator figure to be trusted...

I am sure the team will use good judgement trying to balance what can be done with what should be done, as I realize nobody is really making a living here.
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NoQ
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by NoQ »

Rank should be non-decreasing. So that people didn't ever want to wipe it.
Right now it isn't (medal can be taken away, and hard to recover).
Zepherian
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by Zepherian »

NoQ wrote:Rank should be non-decreasing. So that people didn't ever want to wipe it.
Right now it isn't (medal can be taken away, and hard to recover).
Or rank could be non variable, based on various aspects, yet there could be a decreasing rank based on the win ratio of the last N games... Why just one medal? The trick is not just programming it, it is deciding on rank rules so as to be it useful to us players.
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The Overlord
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by The Overlord »

I suggest looking at the game I linked earlier, it is one of the most successful freerts type games online for a reason, so it may be good to inspect the mechanics to see if wz could benifit from what they do that works.
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by bendib »

Hmm, when you quit early, perhaps it should be considered a loss if you are the host? Perhaps give victory to whoever is left, even if the host quit?
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vexed
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by vexed »

Terminator wrote:
vexed wrote: Medals are really meaningless at this point, and I suppose we should get rid of them.
Plz dont. What about just store it in hashed form (not in open text-like, that everyone may change it easily) :geek:
They were once encoded...and that was removed (forgot the exact reason why), but that is besides the point.
Cyp wrote:Medals are currently meaningless. Even if noone could edit the stats files, medals would still be almost meaningless, since they're only updated at the end of the game, if the host or player doesn't quit before the game ends.
What he said.

Worthless is another term that can be used about them.
Sure, if this was all server side, then they would be meaningful, but it is not, so they are not.

As for having lots of extras in warzone like a IRC style chat system. Not gonna happen. WZ's GUI (and design) just isn't made for anything but the bare minimum you see.

If we were to have some kind of external program that could launch WZ, then, that will solve multiple problems with the whole frontend we have now. It could support a chat system, have much better map & mod support, and be a light weight client as well. This would be all done in Qt, something Qt is actually very good at.
The only problem with this is, nobody else really liked this kind of a design.
/facepalm ...Grinch stole Warzone🙈🙉🙊 contra principia negantem non est disputandum
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by stiv »

If we were to have some kind of external program that could launch WZ,
Paging Mr Berg and his mod launcher to the white courtesy phone
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NoQ
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by NoQ »

All we need is a good CLI. Then we could easily see external launchers created and figure out if we like one of them. It'd really simplify my modding life as well. It'd allow more complicated stuff, such as automated game hosting (equivalent to headless server, sort of). That's a lot of benefit. Worth a try, i think.
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Berg
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by Berg »

stiv wrote: Paging Mr Berg and his mod launcher to the white courtesy phone

I have a python modloader and game starter already made its the way I launch warzone.
Its a simple program ATM but I had plans to make it show the list of games on a ticker like the lobby channel.
Still work in prgress.
http://sourceforge.net/p/wzgraphicmods/ ... modloader/
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by stiv »

All we need is a good CLI.
warzone2100 --help is your friend.

Slightly OT, but the whole autoload abomination arose because users on certain platforms had trouble with command line switches.
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by NoQ »

warzone2100 --help is your friend.
There are quite a few extra features i want from this.

In particular, i want --game and --host parameters to make more sense. The former does dunno what, something campaign-related. The latter throws asserts and then brings you to the skirmish game setup. What i'd really like to have is an ability to host (for multiplayer) a particular map with a particular game setup and auto-click "ready". And, optionally, don't show anything on the screen (: (: (:
users on certain platforms had trouble with command line switches
I'd rather say command line switches had trouble with users of certain platforms :roll:
Zepherian
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by Zepherian »

Just a small bump to report that the host quit issue, ie, hosts quitting before the game ends, is becoming epidemic. As I get better at this game (or regain the form I had 15 years ago, depending on the viewpoint) I see that the moral fibre of the warzone gamer community needs a boost. People should realize that if they are hosting there is a moral obligation to ensure other people have a good time, and quitting when things start to go downhill, which has happened to me dozens of times the last few weeks, and ending the game for everyone is not good hosting.

I seem to recall the game renegotiating hosts back in the day (not that it ever worked...), could something like this be implemented? Server side games would solve this issue but I don't see how that could be implemented on a free game. It's a shame really because this particular cheat (is it a cheat or do people have a right to throw the board on the floor?) is getting annoying for those of us that put effort into a win only to come back with an administrative draw.

Any comment on this one?
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by vexed »

Zepherian wrote:Just a small bump to report that the host quit issue, ie, hosts quitting before the game ends, is becoming epidemic. As I get better at this game (or regain the form I had 15 years ago, depending on the viewpoint) I see that the moral fibre of the warzone gamer community needs a boost. People should realize that if they are hosting there is a moral obligation to ensure other people have a good time, and quitting when things start to go downhill, which has happened to me dozens of times the last few weeks, and ending the game for everyone is not good hosting.
The only fix is to host yourself...or only go to game hosts that you know won't drop.
I seem to recall the game renegotiating hosts back in the day (not that it ever worked...), could something like this be implemented? Server side games would solve this issue but I don't see how that could be implemented on a free game. It's a shame really because this particular cheat (is it a cheat or do people have a right to throw the board on the floor?) is getting annoying for those of us that put effort into a win only to come back with an administrative draw.

Any comment on this one?
It never was possible in Warzone to swap hosts. It can't be done as it is written.
And no, it isn't a cheat. If a host wants to quit, then we can't really stop them. All we do is tell them, if they quit, they will end the game for everyone.
While it can be possible to do that, that would require that everyone be able to host a game, and lots of people can't or won't open up the required ports to do that.
/facepalm ...Grinch stole Warzone🙈🙉🙊 contra principia negantem non est disputandum
Super busy, don't expect a timely reply back.
xfinnian
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Re: What could be done about cheating hosts?

Post by xfinnian »

Ive noticed a few hosts cheating; however i cant remember they're names.
I will reply as soon as possible.
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