Mendicant Cheating

[Lanyon]

I seriously doubt that will happen as any way he claims to be related to Mendicant would just get laughed at IC. Aurvandil isn't as weird as you think. Something like that would get ridiculed by me personally IC and several others that I know of.

[^ban^]

Does anyone know why there is so much poison on these forums?

I've been trying to figure it out, and I really have no idea.

[Bael]

Does anyone know why there is so much poison on these forums?

I've been trying to figure it out, and I really have no idea.

Is it the whole forum, or just the Dwilight one?

[Anaris]

The more I read, the more I am convinced that the poison has existed all along in certain parts of the player base.

I think the main difference between the old discussion list and the forum is that the forum draws a larger proportion of the player base. This not only means that, statistically, you'll end up with more people willing to spew bile in public OOC—you'll also end up with more people on opposite sides of various IG conflicts coming into OOC contact.

Regarding the current troubles, I can fully understand people's frustration with Aurvandil's military might and their successes. I'm frustrated by it myself. But the frustration isn't the problem: the lack of empathy is.

If they would honestly put themselves in the place of a player in Aurvandil who was not in any way involved in the cheating—which, as I've said before, I can 100% guarantee exist in Aurvandil—I think they would start to understand why banning every member of the realm from the game, or any other kind of realmwide punishment, would be deeply unjust.

This is the kind of attitude that starts blood feuds in real life. Stop ranting and raging, and think for a bit about how the people you're talking to feel, and how the people you're talking about feel.

[Glaumring the Fox]

I have never encountered this poison in the playerbase of Dwilight... :'(

[Miriam Ics]

This is the kind of attitude that starts blood feuds in real life. Stop ranting and raging, and think for a bit about how the people you're talking to feel, and how the people you're talking about feel.

Perfect!

[Lanyon]

I think the biggest reason for the vitriol is the amount of emotional and physical energy that people put into this game. The same reason it is so awesome is the reason that people seem willing to go to ACTUAL war over there OOC thoughts. It is a kudos to tom for making this happen but it is also a very serious issue. It reminds me of High level starcraft players who yell and scream when they do bad (Oh HAI Idra). When you take something this seriously it's hard to seperate your views.

[Geronus]

We investigated it very carefully back then and found nothing. You may not have been correct back then, and are correct now.

I've been suspicious of his accounts since before Aurvandil even existed. It wasn't a particularly difficult conclusion to draw honestly, and obviously there are many, many players who felt the same way since accusations and rumors of abuse have been following Aurvandil since virtually the moment of its creation. There was just something off about them and the way that they coordinated with each other and just seemed to be so in sync in all aspects of the game. It was more than just that, but that was a big part of it. As you started to notice that though and looked at them more closely, there were a lot of things that just started to jump out at you. Of course none of it was damning, it was all just very suspicious.

I know the Titans and Devs are all volunteers, but there's only so much we as players can do to report multi-cheaters when we also have no tools that would produce anything that can credibly be called evidence. Sometimes I have a hunch about certain accounts because of patterns of behavior, but it's very hard to translate a gut feeling into a rational explanation that will make sense to someone else. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, the player screws up and draws attention to what he's doing, but not even that will guarantee Titan action. To my very great annoyance, I reported one of Psyche's multi-cheating escapades months before he was officially caught, and received a reply from the Titans of "insufficient evidence." The guy literally responded to a letter addressed to a member of one family from an entirely different account (think about how sometimes a player with two characters in the same realm gets them mixed up - same deal). If that's not enough evidence, what is? A player cannot get evidence any more solid than that. Meanwhile, that player ended up causing all kinds of mischief for Riombara in the interim between when I reported him and when his accounts were actually locked.

Is there anything that we, the community, can do to assist in the identification of multi-cheaters? I mean, we can report every hunch we have, but that's not going to help if the Titans don't have the time to follow up on all the leads. Is it possible to give Magistrates or some other expanded pool of players the tools to actually investigate these sorts of things, or does that require knowledge and access that only the Devs have?

[Solari]

The overwhelming majority of cases that get reported are either inconclusive or demonstrably not cheaters. This is one of the reasons that a policy of "lock first, ask questions later" hasn't been adopted. I have a theory that multis aren't any more prevalent than they've always been. The number of active players has fallen, and thus the share of the overall player base and the impact their actions have has grown significantly. If this theory is correct, then the correct question isn't "what more can be done to curtail multis" but "how do we increase the player count", or "what factors make for a truly enjoyable experience and how do we pursue them?"

[Miriam Ics]

Lanyon also said it well. Everyone need to be careful and put things on perspective and not mix real player feelings with characters feelings.
One thing I love in BM is that you can be your own enemy and have fun with this. Not so funny when you need to convince people that all you want is to have fun and not to spy or play any dirty game.

The more players we have, the more we will have this kind of behavior and not because people are bad, but because at some point people forget to look at the player and react only to the characters.

[Anaris]

I've hesitated before saying this, but I do think it needs saying.

Another part of the reason the forum descends into this level of poisonous sniping is because the moderators don't nip it in the bud.

If every time people started attacking other players, or raging and flaming, their posts got deleted and they got warnings, I suspect that we'd see a lot less of that behaviour—particularly from the people who got warned.

[Lefanis]

I've been suspicious of his accounts since before Aurvandil even existed.

Him and his clones also did a good job keeping the rebellions going in Arcachon, leading to her eventual destruction.

[egamma]

I've hesitated before saying this, but I do think it needs saying.

Another part of the reason the forum descends into this level of poisonous sniping is because the moderators don't nip it in the bud.

If every time people started attacking other players, or raging and flaming, their posts got deleted and they got warnings, I suspect that we'd see a lot less of that behaviour—particularly from the people who got warned.

And if I did go on a moderator rampage, there would be cries of "censorship!", and possibly some accusations of favoritism. Should I warn people for 5 points, or 10 points, or 20 points?

[Indirik]

Meh... we need a private moderator board...

[Anaris]

And if I did go on a moderator rampage, there would be cries of "censorship!", and possibly some accusations of favoritism. Should I warn people for 5 points, or 10 points, or 20 points?

I'm not saying do it now. I'm saying it should have been done one by one, as the posts appeared. That wouldn't have been a rampage.

And just like I do my job and lock multis (and don't delete realms) when I find them, despite what bitching and moaning it might raise from the players, so should the mods be doing their job despite what bitching and moaning it might raise.

As for points, I haven't the foggiest idea. I'm not a mod myself. Ask Indirik or Tom.