End Aurvandil's Blatant Cheating

[Anaris]

I'd like to note that both Anaris and ^ban^ have characters in Luria Nova. I have been led to believe that Luria Nova directly benefited from one of Mendicant's alt accounts (Luria Vesperi's General, who deliberately threw his realm under the proverbial bus and let Luria Nova win).

So you guys are not exactly unbiased neutral parties here.

This is wrong and/or misses the point on so many levels.

Just to pick a few obvious ones:

- We are the dev team you've got. Asking for other people who aren't involved in any way won't get you very far.

- Luria Vesperi's demise was a woefully foregone conclusion. Seriously, have you looked at the relative sizes of the realms?

- From what I understood, it was LV's ruler who eventually agreed to a surrender. Not their General.

- Finally, and probably most importantly: If you really believe that it takes that little to bias the dev team—the ones who control the code, the database, and everything else about the game except the players themselves—then (ignoring the insult implied in that) why are you still playing this game?

[Anaris]

Let me put it this way. Those accounts pumped gold into the realm. You guys can add up how much gold they accumulate right? You can then deduct that from the realm right?

You can then say "Sorry guys this was ill gotten gold and you can't keep it". Sounds pretty just to me.

Now here's were arbitrary comes in. If it takes too long or its impossible to ad up all that gold all the accounts earned you can just pick an amount, a lowball figure. Lets say 1000 gold. If the guy had 14 accounts and he only managed to put 1000 gold into the realm he's the most pathetic cheater I've ever heard of.

Again, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.

How does taking 5000 gold out of circulation sound? Would that be OK? Because that's the amount they've got on them right now, that will vanish entirely when they autopause.

[Indirik]

Let me put it this way. Those accounts pumped gold into the realm. You guys can add up how much gold they accumulate right?

Maybe, maybe not. There are not a lot of records kept of that kind of thing. There are ways to make approximations, but they may not be reliable.[/quote]

You can then deduct that from the realm right?

You can't deduct gold from a realm. You an only deduct gold from characters. Doing that would entail removing gold from players who haven't done anything wrong. We don't punish players who haven't done anything wrong.

[Dishman]

5000 gold

*foams at the mouth with desire*

In all honesty, I feel like this has been handled fairly well. It sucks that Aurvandil was suspected of cheating for so long and only now got caught, but a delicate hand takes time. Head cheater is taken out (or at least reduced to 0 if he finds a way back in), Aurvandil will continue to be 'suspect', and we've seen how much ire can be raised by cheating.

Like some others have said, if you suspect someone of being a multi/cheater/Mendicant, report them to the Titans. It's just as much the players role to find abuse/cheaters as it is the devs.

I sympathize with people who lost quite a bit by Mendicant's nefarious means...but you could have lost it legitimately just as easily. The game is about foiled plans, horrible failures, and stabbing of backs. Look forward to your new plans rather than fomenting on your old ones that didn't work out.

[pcw27]

How does taking 5000 gold out of circulation sound? Would that be OK? Because that's the amount they've got on them right now, that will vanish entirely when they autopause.

That's the tip of the iceberg.

You can't deduct gold from a realm. You an only deduct gold from characters. Doing that would entail removing gold from players who haven't done anything wrong. We don't punish players who haven't done anything wrong.

Can you track what regions they put investments in? If so can you reduce their yield for a certain amount of time?

[Foxglove]

I should say that I don't play on the island involved, so I'm only getting the picture presented of the problem here on the forum. But it does seem as though some thought needs to go into what can be done when a substantial and long-term case of cheating gives a realm a serious in-game advantage and other players are obviously very angry about it. When people have invested recreational time playing against a rule breaking advantage, it's perfectly understandable for them to be angry.

Part of Battlemaster is the team-based gameplay. Making a comparision to sports, a player on the Aurvandil team has been found to have broken the rules in the most serious fashion over a very long period of time. Therefore, it's not unreasonable that the team should also be sanctioned in some way. Also, honest players in Aurvandil aren't really harmed by any limited form of sanctions placed on the realm, because every other realm in which they play is unharmed.

[^ban^]

Alrighty,

returning to the original topic!

The case makes no clear accusations, provides no evidence of misdeeds, and if the accusation is indeed multicheating... the Magistrates do not have the tools to deal with it. I'm closing this.

[Tom]

In all honesty, I feel like this has been handled fairly well. It sucks that Aurvandil was suspected of cheating for so long and only now got caught, but a delicate hand takes time.

We investigated before and found nothing. It is well possible that things were legit until we basically said "all good" and then he felt like he had a free pass and started cheating. It is possible that some of the accounts actually used to be played by other people, and since they were OOC friends, they gave their accounts to him when they left and he continued playing them - we know this has happened in other multi-cheater cases.

We do not know what exactly went on when exactly. So to all who are saying they had suspected this before - yes we know and we checked it out back then. We found nothing then, we found something this time. Maybe we looked better this time, or maybe there actually was nothing to be found the first time. Keep that possibility in mind, please, before you accuse an entire realm of cheating.