What? It ended early?

As far as I can tell he had the advantage the whole time.

The way I see this is he either showed you that 2 can play the game of stalling (rightly or wrongly thinking that you were, I'm personally not inclined to think you were stalling since you are widely known to be a very slow player no matter the circumstances) or he just didn't wanna be arsed after being ignored by you.

I do however agree with others that something should be done about stalling as you can't really expect people not to use the advantage if it's there, no matter the etiquette or ethics of it. Systemic solution needed, as always.

Edited 7/15/2016 02:32:00

Realistically, Fizzer won't solve the problem anytime soon or take care of it in the near future if he hasn't done much about it in the past.

Either we say that stalling is okay and openly condone it as a community. Or we actually oppose cheating in the community.

Daddy Fizzer won't take care of everything, so you can't keep shoving off that responsibility to him while you take advantage of him not doing anything. It doesn't even take the whole community to make a meaningful difference- literally just one or two people to start things. If ChrisCMU cared, for example, he could bar known cheaters from competing in Clan League. If Norman or M'Hunters cared, they could, for example, not allow known cheaters to represent them in Clan League (or even- *gasp*- actually disavow them and remove them from their clan since they clearly seem to have high standards). If CORP cared, they could kick out a known coin cheater from their leadership.

But of course M'H would rather enjoy the extra edge they get from maxxing out AI, CORP still wants to keep Death around, and we're all totally cool with Gnuffone now. Because our principles matter less to us than the points in a contest. That's why baseball players take steroids- fuck it if I'm gonna ruin the sport for everyone, I'd rather get those extra home runs and have a shot at the World Series. That's why Olympians dope- a gold medal will get you a lot more cheering and a lot more money than keeping your principles and your sport intact. Cheating happens because it's profitable and because people respect winning more than they respect the game.

The thing is no one cares enough to take any sort of action where they'd suffer the tiniest loss in the name of the principles they care to stand for. It's like talking about how big of a problem AIDS is while doing nothing about it. Just go ahead and admit you don't really care.

Edited 7/15/2016 03:14:40

MisterT had better chances of winning, he diserved his victory and to win the seasonal.

he should prove it by playing it out from that exact scenario in a custom scenario game

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

His win wasn't yet locked in. For him to stall and guarantee it at probably the most crucial turn in the game doesn't make it a deserved victory at all. It's abuse, plain and simple, abuse to eliminate the last possible threat he faced instead of actually playing out the game and building more than just a 1 army/turn income advantage.

Then again, I wouldn't expect a better response from |GG|. Like I said, no one's gonna call out a cheater if it goes against the interests of their clan.

Edited 7/15/2016 03:33:33

It's arbitrary. I have no horse in that race (pun maybe intended) and I don't see it the way you do. It sucks but unless Fizzer has systemic solution, there will be no solution.

Taking away the possibility for abuse is the only way to stop the abuse. Not the reward, not the punishment.

That's exactly why God had to come back and make doping physically impossible. Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to take any action against it ourselves.

And yet you have Armstrongs and Sharapovas over and over again.

Just because people slip through the system doesn't mean you stop caring about ethics. You're not going to catch every murderer, but that doesn't mean you suddenly make murder legal.

Knyte, I'm not arguing to make murder legal. Nor that your suggestion would not decrease stalling somewhat. I'm arguing that it wouldn't stop stalling. At all.

I am also not too optimistic on it's overall impact,numbers-wise. You think, say alhazi, would stop his stalling over the threat of...what, clan expulsion? clan league denied? We're very limited in what we can do in those scenarios. Like, blacklist.

We, as a community, can't even have a working etiquette on VTE first turn boot. Half the community will never do it. Tackling stalling that way is a very,very tall order.

And as for whatever positive impact the implementation of your suggestion would have, you'd raise all sorts of questions, slippery slope/precedent/gray area arguments between the people etc etc as a negative effect.

Next, what guarantees impartiality? A lot of those decisions would not really be in the hands of community as a whole but those of certain individuals.
What do we do when those individuals break our little unwritten rules? What if you have the same double standards you are annoyed by now?

Lastly,since this is an online game and not a triple homicide case, everyone should be able to redeem themselves. When, where and how is that decided? And by whom?

I am not against us trying to do all that, but it seems like too much of a hustle to think through over an unsportsmanlike behavior on a seasonal ladder and frankly unlikely to yield the results desired. That's why I'm saying that absolute solution needs to be systemic and has to remove the very possibility of abuse.

Thought a programmer would understand :P

Kicking MisterT out of |GG| won't discourage stalling at all?

A lot of those decisions would not really be in the hands of community as a whole but those of certain individuals.

Right. We're completely free to decide what behavior we condone. Just like the Olympics decided not to condone doping (but that didn't stop doping entirely), clans and the Clan League and decide not to condone cheating. You don't need a perfect decentralized mechanism controlling services that small groups of people provide.

But those are all questions we should be asking instead of just deciding not to do anything about the problem or attacking ACL Tears for even bringing it up. We don't need an absolute, perfect solution. We just need at least a little bit of caring about community norms- or just going ahead and recognizing that these norms don't exist in the first place. You have to pick one or the other- either actually do something or stop paying lip service.

Edited 7/15/2016 06:44:57

Discourage who? GG members. Ok.

I personally do not think that he stalled here. Nor do I think ACL stalled. It would also be a bitch to prove beyond any doubt that somebody did. Circumstantial stuff...What determines it, where's the line? We are talking one turn in a game where a guy in question had advantage the whole time and asked to finish the game so it would be a clean trophy.

Sorry, it's not evidence enough for me to cast a stone. This kinda stuff could end in a witch hunt and that's something I have no desire to be a part of.

Edited 7/15/2016 06:53:04

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=11494291

^

If I had one more turn, I would've won this game. But because he dragged it out, went on vacation or w/e I lost it. Fizzer needs to do something to change it.

@Cloud Strife: it'd just take one very small change to the query game API to detect wide-spread stalling. We could simply determine whether people take their turns slower when they're losing than when they're winning. That's essentially what stalling is- delaying losses because it gives you an advantage on a ladder.

Of course there's a gray area. Just like there is in real-life law- there's no clear or precise delineation for certain human rights violations in international law, for example. But just because the gray area exists doesn't mean we ignore the obvious examples.

I believe MisterT deliberately stalled this game. To me, his seasonal win is tainted, and I have little doubt many others will share this opinion. That said, I don't think there is enough evidence for Fizzer to officially strip MisterT of his title in this case.

For JV in the season on Poland, I really wish JV had been stripped of his title (perhaps by making him autolose the games he stalled), because he clearly stalled in multiple games, and his moves(or lack of) in those games at the end are solely about keeping as many armies as possible.

I see 2 possible changes to the seasonal that I think would be easy to implement and greatly reduce the ability of someone to stall:

1. Increase the length of the season. Keep giving games at the same rate and stop at 20 games. But allow 10-15 extra days for them to finish. This may have been an issue back when new seasons used to start within a week after the old one ended, but those days are long past. With all this time between seasons, it makes a lot of sense to increase the length of the season to allow more games to finish.

2. Don't allow vacations on the season. A lot of people probably don't like this idea, as many people legitimately want to take vacations during the season. That said, vacations give a player an easy option to stall near the end of the season and pass it off as a legitimate vacation. One potential option, rather than allowing vacations, is to have a banking boot set at the start of the game (maybe give each player 3 extra days, or 5 extra days). This would allow a bit of leeway on the boot time, but would also not allow a great deal of stalling like a traditional vacation would.

Im really angry how this thread is shaming my honoust and fair win in seasonal.

ACl is the one who just committed 5 turns in 10 days clearly not trying anything to end the game before the end of season. After 4 days i realised he plays really slow so for 6 days i tried everything to speed it up. i wrote in chat i wrote a personal message and i wrote a mail in which i even proposed to come online when he was online so we could play rt or could arrange anything to speed it up. On all of these attempts i didnt get any response at all while he obviously must have read anything of it (acl tears falsely claims he didnt read any of it on the forum).

as a last attempt because i hated if the crucial game in seasonal would end like this i wrote fizzer and he mailed acl. i dont know how but while he wasnt able to read all my messages for 6 days he could read that one so we played we for 1/2 days 1/2 turns.

Then i got into a busy 2 day so i didnt have to time to play this important game because that would require a bit of thought and i didnt have time for that. Obviously i realised i would win because i did have the better incomex2/army count but i had this on turn 1/2/4/5 and i was pretty sure i would have it in turn 6/7/8 so it wouldnt really matter if i played 1/2 more turns.

now i read the person who didnt do a single attempt to finish the seasonal game for 10 days out of the 12 days for the last game of seasonal doesnt only accuse me of cheating he is shaming my name on the forum. if i didnt write fizzer the game would just have made it 4 turns probably.

he writes on the forum that he will be online the last day of seasonal so he and i can finish it. he does this 15 hours before the end of seasonal. so for 11,5 days he commits 5 turns and then he suddenly with 15 hours remaining he writes he is willing to end it. this is extremly hypocritical especially because i was trying to arrange a time to rt/play faster for 6 days and he didnt even react. with the message 15 hours before seasonal how was i supposod to read it on time and make time to play it. i have no idea.

offcourse the seasonal ending idea is broken. but its not broken by me its broken by acltears. and acltears should be ashamed of that.

Edited 7/15/2016 10:01:21

At acltears/knyte

so because i played slow for 2and a half days you have enough profe to call me a staller on forum and shaming me ! that is just redicilious. that is no profe at all. the fact that i normally play quick doesnt mean i have time enough to always play quick. also if thats your way of profe that means quick players will be accused and punished way earlier for playing slow/stalling compared to slow players which doesnt seem honoust to me.

im really furious that me the person who did everything to end the seaonal on time is the one shamed on forum so go apologize to me or go f*** yourself.

Edited 7/15/2016 10:11:22

You had enough time to log in about half a dozen times and take enough actions for it to update your profile's last seen multiple times during the session... but not to take turns in one of your 9 ongoing games that just happened to be an ongoing Seasonal Ladder game?

Come up with a better excuse next time. Congratulations on the dirty win.

You were probably gonna win anyway, too. This is like being Michael Phelps-level good and still deciding to dope just to be safe.

Edited 7/15/2016 10:21:36

Being online =/= taking turns. I dont know why everybody thinks that. Im online multiple times every day, i take turns usually once every day if my opponents are lucky. It can also happen that i wont take my turns for almost three days even though im online everyday. Doesnt mean I am stalling, i might not have the time or will to think at that point.