End Aurvandil's Blatant Cheating

[pcw27]

Again, where's the evidence? Where's the list of suspected accounts? What have they supposedly done?

I can't even count all the times we have received accusations of multis that "everyone knows" are guilty, with no more evidence than they started in the same month, or have names from the same anime series. If you want an accusation to be taken seriously, you need evidence, and a specific set of accounts that you think are involved. What I see quoted above is a bunch of angry people who are taking scraps of information, combining it with insubstantiated rumour, and letting their imaginations run away with it. There's nothing in this report that even deserves being glanced at, let alone investigated.

That the realm was being run by a guy with 14-20 accounts is not a rumor is it? Apparently the magistrate was the wrong place to take this issue, but to say this isn't worthy of further investigation is ridiculous. Think like a detective here. If you found twenty people at a company of 60 people using their branches of the company as a front for a drug ring would you not at least put some investigation into the other 40 people?

Since I've clearly misunderstood what the magistrate is for feel free to move this thread. If you choose to lock it I'd really appreciate if you'd post a redirect to a new thread where people can discuss the issue and present evidence that they may have encountered.

[Anaris]

I know, for a fact, that there are and have been people playing in Aurvandil who have nothing to do with Mendicant.

Furthermore, the dev team simply does not have the time and resources to "investigate" 40+ people for cheating. When the cheaters are clever enough to evade the simple automated checks, it is a time-intensive manual process.

Off the top of my head, I'd guess that if there are, in fact, further cheaters among the remaining accounts in Aurvandil, it will take 2-3 days of working 4-8 hours on nothing else to confirm that they, and no one else, are cheaters. If there aren't any, it will take longer.

It's really easy to sit there and say, "Everybody knows there's loads of cheating still! Get out there and get us justice!"

It's much harder to actually do it.

You want justice? Get me evidence. Get me user IDs to investigate. And stop whining.

[Tom]

We do not lock people without evidence, and everyone should be very, very happy that we don't.


I understand every anger. However, we can not rewind history. What exactly do you want us to do? Can you come up with something that would not have some other group of players complain (and rightfully) for not being given whatever it is?


If people are, indeed, reserving him positions for his return, then I am all for giving them a 3-day warning lock for supporting a cheater.


Also, what people seem to be forgetting is that we have invested a lot of time and effort into investigating Aurvendil several times. It makes me sad to read that people think we don't care, because we do. We care about finding cheaters and we care about protecting good players. Most importantly, we want to be sure that we don't lock honest players as cheaters on some kind of overzealous inquisition.

Yes, I would rather let someone I suspect of cheating stay than lock someone who might be innocent. I am very sure that if we are talking not hypothetically but about an actual innocent player, say, you, then you would agree with this in dubio pro reo approach, yes?

[pcw27]

Is there a guide for spotting evidence of multi account cheating? Something that can tell players what to look for so they know it when they see it (and furthermore what is insufficient evidence so they don't waste your time)?

If so I suggest game announcements every time people are caught cheating (or at least when they're doing so en mass) which refers people to these guidelines.

[Chenier]

We do not lock people without evidence, and everyone should be very, very happy that we don't.

Understandable, and I don't think anyone asked that all accounts in Aurvandil be locked.

I understand every anger. However, we can not rewind history. What exactly do you want us to do? Can you come up with something that would not have some other group of players complain (and rightfully) for not being given whatever it is?

The bare minimum would be breaking the momentum that cheating gave them. As it is, they are on a roll. All of their beighbors are crippled, and they are already issuing new threats, bullying, and preparing to conquer some of their neighbors again. They've demonstrated that they are too far away for the North to be able to do anything about them, and even with a ton of accounts less they are still plenty able to overwhelm all of their beighbors thanks to the crippled state their cheating left everyone in.

I, and others, favor total realm destruction by now, though. Would they complain? Sure. But why would it be fair that they get to keep their realm as a superpower while all of their neighbors were crushed to their cheating? A realm is not a right. If a realm was acquired by cheating, then no one is entitled to it. Just like when you acquire a stolen good, even through legitimate means, you are not entitled to it. Why would justice be any different in a game than in RL? The honest players can then try to rebuild their realm legitimately. The injustice suffered by these players would be far lesser than the injustice that was suffered and is still being suffered by the players of the 'moot playing fairly.

Also, what people seem to be forgetting is that we have invested a lot of time and effort into investigating Aurvendil several times. It makes me sad to read that people think we don't care, because we do. We care about finding cheaters and we care about protecting good players. Most importantly, we want to be sure that we don't lock honest players as cheaters on some kind of overzealous inquisition.

Yes, I would rather let someone I suspect of cheating stay than lock someone who might be innocent. I am very sure that if we are talking not hypothetically but about an actual innocent player, say, you, then you would agree with this in dubio pro reo approach, yes?

Hence the difference between sanctioning players and sanctioning a realm. Even if you lock for 3 days all of the people that support Mendicant's return... What will that give? Their supporters will keep their titles and they will resume profiting from everything the cheating granted them once the 3 days expires. Having the realm destroyed, however, is not a punishment to any of the legitimate players. Realms die all of the time. And if they are that many and they truly are that good, then nothing will prevent them from sticking together and rebuilding a realm. But they should rebuild it fairly. Destroying a realm that massively benefited from cheating and that is glorifying the cheaters after the fact, fully knowing what was done, is not anywhere near the same thing as locking random people with little proof.

I wish to add, however, that I am greatly concerned with Dustole's report of new accounts being created with similar traits as the locked accounts... The players of Aurvandil looked the other way during years. Who will report these cheater accounts now that Allison bailed the realm? Who will prevent Mendicant from recreating all of his alts?

[^ban^]

The bare minimum would be breaking the momentum that cheating gave them.

No.

The accounts have been locked, and no method of measuring 'momentum' exists. Even if we wanted to, we cannot revert things that cannot be measured.

Deal with it, and stop this "woe is me" crap.

[pcw27]

No.

The accounts have been locked, and no method of measuring 'momentum' exists. Even if we wanted to, we cannot revert things that cannot be measured.

Deal with it, and stop this "woe is me" crap.

Deal with it how? How do you propose we fight twenty to one?

So what if you can't measure momentum? It's obvious the cheating generated tons of gold and resources and allowed them to damage lots of land. Apply some arbitrary penalty. Set the whole realm on auto drought, reduce everyone's gold/bonds on hand by half or to zero. You're right I'd be pretty mad if I got mistakenly account locked but I could easily get over a little gold loss. In any case I'd be mad at the cheaters not the dev team.

"No matter what someone will be mad" is not an excuse. If you punish the cheaters and some innocent players get collateral damage then you just have some pissed off players, most of which will get over it. If you punish no one and the cheaters and their collaborators act with impunity then you have a ruined game.

In college if a group makes a project and someone plagiarizes their part of the project the entire group gets punished unless someone fesses up. Is that unfair to the honest students? Hell no, but it'll be even more unfair if they let cheaters off scott free.

Here's the simple breakdown:

Do something about Aurvandil. A handful of honest players will be pissed that they might have lost something. If they have any common sense they'll be mad at the cheaters.

Do nothing about Aurvandil. Cheaters will know it's a safe haven, they'll keep coming back and a continent's worth of players will be mad as hell.

Off the top of my head, I'd guess that if there are, in fact, further cheaters among the remaining accounts in Aurvandil, it will take 2-3 days of working 4-8 hours on nothing else to confirm that they, and no one else, are cheaters. If there aren't any, it will take longer.

I obviously didn't mean you should check every last player. Is it not worth canvassing at least the big wigs? The realm council the lords, maybe the marshals? Isn't it worth checking their replacements to make sure they're not being played by the same guy?

[Indirik]

Apply some arbitrary penalty.

MMmm... yeah... Arbitrary punishment of an entire realm because one player in that realm did something stupid. That just smacks of righteousness and justice.

If we made it a habit to do that kind of thing, we wouldn't have any players left. Do you have any idea how many realms in this game we'd have to smack down if we started doing stuff like this?

If you punish no one and the cheaters and their collaborators act with impunity then you have a ruined game.

You are working from a very bad initial assumption here. Someone was punished. Multi-accounting was identified, the accounts involved were investigated and locked. The cheater was punished. End of story. I'm sorry that we we didn't act with enough public spectacle and the random floggings of innocent people to suit your desire for revenge.

If you have proof that there were others that knew of this, and did nothing to stop or report it, or who were involved and running multiple accounts themselves, then please report it along with any evidence you may have.

[GoldPanda]

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.

[GoldPanda]

What's stopping Mendicant's player from making a new account? Or multiple accounts for that matter?

If we don't have any mechanism for stopping new mutli-accounts from being registered, then you're not really "stopping" him. You're just slowing him down a tiny bit.

[Tom]

I, and others, favor total realm destruction by now, though. Would they complain? Sure. But why would it be fair that they get to keep their realm as a superpower while all of their neighbors were crushed to their cheating? A realm is not a right. If a realm was acquired by cheating, then no one is entitled to it. Just like when you acquire a stolen good, even through legitimate means, you are not entitled to it. Why would justice be any different in a game than in RL? The honest players can then try to rebuild their realm legitimately. The injustice suffered by these players would be far lesser than the injustice that was suffered and is still being suffered by the players of the 'moot playing fairly.

We do not do summary justice. We won't punish innocent people for something that other people did. Yes, I realize that innocent people are suffering from the effects as well, but that is not something that we, the game designers and GMs actively did, and that is a very, very important difference.

Throughout this game, especially when I still played myself, there have always been accusations of the GMs helping this realm or those characters or having favourites. Actually intervening in the game is a very, very dangerous step that I will not take lightly, and preferably, not at all.


We have locked the multi-cheater accounts. Their characters are stranded, including all the troops, gold, bonds and everything else they had. The command structure, both IG and OOG has probably been disrupted. Any momentum the realm might have illegitimately had should be gone with that. If we missed any cheater accounts, I'm quite sure they will lie low for a while, because we are still looking and if we spot more suspicious activity, we will investigate.

[Tom]

What's stopping Mendicant's player from making a new account? Or multiple accounts for that matter?

Nothing stops him from making a new account. On the contrary, the official policy has always been that you can come back if you play by the rules.

If he creates multiple accounts again, we will find them and lock them again. He wouldn't be the first multi-cheater who thinks he's smarter than us. He forgets that we literally own the database, the server and every data and logfile that exists about the game. We find out cheaters, and if it takes a while then it only means they have more to lose.

[Penchant]

I would like to make a clarification.

If people are, indeed, reserving him positions for his return, then I am all for giving them a 3-day warning lock for supporting a cheater.

Aurvandil's nobles want to change the title of the rulership to a Regency or something like that because they wait for their true king, Mendicant the character, not the player.

Their characters are stranded, including... gold, bonds...

Are you sure about their gold and bonds being gone? I may be wrong, but I believe it has previously been implied by the other devs that the bonds did go through the tax system, though I do not know about the gold.

[Kwanstein]

@pcw27, Chenier

This game is supposed to be a sandbox of sorts, with an emphasis on role playing rather than power gaming. Harming Aurvandil by deleting gold and recruitment centres, or whatever you come up with, does nothing to promote role playing. Quite the opposite, in fact. It actually hinders role playing, as it presents the characters with things that can only be contrived as supernatural acts (God destroyed half of our recruitment centres!!!). You ask that these things be implemented in order to curb Aurvandil's power, as if this were a death match or something. But this isn't a death match and nothing is achieved by crippling Aurvandil, as the role playing and other things can continue unabated in any case.

If Aurvandil's about to destroy your favourite realm because they are so strong, then I have this to suggest to you. Identify what makes the realm so dear to you and then try to implement that thing in other realms that you are in. That way there will be multiple realms which you can enjoy and you do not have to depend precariously on a single one. For my part, I do not care when realms die because I am not picky so there are plenty others for me to choose from. I also do not care when one realm is more powerful than another (such is the case with Aurvandil and Barca), because it does not interfere with the fun I derive from this game (which is wholly untethered by relative power balance between realms).

[pcw27]

MMmm... yeah... Arbitrary punishment of an entire realm because one player in that realm did something stupid. That just smacks of righteousness and justice.

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.