Game abusing and proper dealing with it. How exactly? Admin's opinion about what should I do next?

[nik592]

I'd agree that this sounds like a bug. If you were going to take the trouble to hack BGA to win games, I'd assume you'd go for something more reliable than increasing your time in tournaments (which do have prizes, but as they are only XP, I can't imagine anyone worrying that hard about winning one). And unless your game ended by the game running to maximum time and timing out (which it obviously didn't, since you say you won), I'm really not sure I see how having extra time is much of an advantage?

If you are really concerned, raise the bug. If it's happening as much as you say, others will probably report it too. That said, a quick search of bugs didn't show anyone else reporting it, so I wonder if if it really is happening as you think. It could be as simple as a rounding error between page loads (computers aren't good at rounding decimal numbers correctly sometimes).

[RicardoRix]

Nothing seems particularly fishy. Just some erroneous speculation.
Tournament timing formats can vary, it's up to the tournament organiser, you should check these settings.

If you view the replay, then the time a player has is shown on every move in the log:
At the very bottom of the page there is a checkbox. Display thinking time in logs (above)

There is a also graph.

[Jeff de Matiss]

Does the tournament have a prize? ​ If no, I think this being a simple bug is far more likely than hacking.
(A report on its own won't lead to it being fixed, but would hopefully make it known, thereby allowing that reporting option if it happens again.)

Just the regular few hundred experience prize for finishing in top 3. It is more frustrating to be playing with such individuals than anything else. Just extremely annoying to know someone is taking this to a level where he is using such plans to take a victory without actually having to play by the rules. To me it is way worse than cheating when the one is also disrupting the table's peace and aiming to target another for violation the rules. Then playing stupid when confronted directly about his actions. Like he did nothing and we are all lying him. Absurd!

[mrdoctor]

Jeff - go to the page of the game you are talking about, and then click "view game replay". Then scroll to the very bottom of the page. There is a graph called "Thinking time evolution" which displays how much time each player had during a game and you will be able to see if a player suddenly got an increase in their thinking-time. You can also click "Display thinking time in logs (above)" to see time each player had remaining for each move.

We don't know which game you're referring to so cannot check ourselves. Go look at the game in question, and tell us what you find.

(For what it's worth - it seems very unlikely that someone would hack BGA to increase their thinking-time - as it's a lot of effort/risk to do something that doesn't even mean they win the game)

[Gulchen]

@ ​ Jeff de Matiss ​ ​ ​ :

To be clear, my references - and I think everyone else's followup references - to hacking are, as opposed to this just being a bug.
I at least was - and I think the other's too were - only reacting to your ​ "I think it is not a bug" ​ comment,
rather than being skeptical of your claim that the player's time went up in a tournament.

[nik592]

Jeff - go to the page of the game you are talking about, and then click "view game replay". Then scroll to the very bottom of the page. There is a graph called "Thinking time evolution" which displays how much time each player had during a game and you will be able to see if a player suddenly got an increase in their thinking-time. You can also click "Display thinking time in logs (above)" to see time each player had remaining for each move.

We don't know which game you're referring to so cannot check ourselves. Go look at the game in question, and tell us what you find.

(For what it's worth - it seems very unlikely that someone would hack BGA to increase their thinking-time - as it's a lot of effort/risk to do something that doesn't even mean they win the game)

Given his comment that it was 4-player Catan from a tournament where he won, I'd assume it's this table: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=411666377

Graph of times looks normal. That said, I also can't find a point where times are as described in the original post:

I am at 5 days left, another player X is at 4 days left and the other two players are about 2 days off the limit. I had a reminder I have to play my turn and logged in. And I see that the player X is having 5 days left now. Hmmm??? Well, I thought I was wrong and probably have remebered falsly. However, it happens for second time that he goes down to 4 days left and the next time I had a turn, he is at 5 days again!

There is a point where the OP is hovering around the 5 day mark and so is another player, and the third is in the 2 day range, but the 4th is probably at 4 days (this is probably the correct point, perhaps just a case of misremembering). The other player on the 5 day mark is right on the line between 4 and 5 days, so it could be a rounding issue as I mentioned earlier. As much as it seems strange, computers don't always do so well on rounding numbers consistently. But in any case, certainly no one's time goes up. Personally, I'm not even sure I'd raise a bug, I'd just chalk it up to something weird that happened on the site.

[Jeff de Matiss]

Jeff - go to the page of the game you are talking about, and then click "view game replay". Then scroll to the very bottom of the page. There is a graph called "Thinking time evolution" which displays how much time each player had during a game and you will be able to see if a player suddenly got an increase in their thinking-time. You can also click "Display thinking time in logs (above)" to see time each player had remaining for each move.

We don't know which game you're referring to so cannot check ourselves. Go look at the game in question, and tell us what you find.

(For what it's worth - it seems very unlikely that someone would hack BGA to increase their thinking-time - as it's a lot of effort/risk to do something that doesn't even mean they win the game)

Given his comment that it was 4-player Catan from a tournament where he won, I'd assume it's this table: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=411666377

Graph of times looks normal. That said, I also can't find a point where times are as described in the original post:

I am at 5 days left, another player X is at 4 days left and the other two players are about 2 days off the limit. I had a reminder I have to play my turn and logged in. And I see that the player X is having 5 days left now. Hmmm??? Well, I thought I was wrong and probably have remebered falsly. However, it happens for second time that he goes down to 4 days left and the next time I had a turn, he is at 5 days again!

There is a point where the OP is hovering around the 5 day mark and so is another player, and the third is in the 2 day range, but the 4th is probably at 4 days (this is probably the correct point, perhaps just a case of misremembering). The other player on the 5 day mark is right on the line between 4 and 5 days, so it could be a rounding issue as I mentioned earlier. As much as it seems strange, computers don't always do so well on rounding numbers consistently. But in any case, certainly no one's time goes up. Personally, I'm not even sure I'd raise a bug, I'd just chalk it up to something weird that happened on the site.

Yes, that is the game. And the player named Krogul twice went from 4 to 5 days, tried to accuse the other player of "hiding resource type information and lying", also found it very funny how he behaved about it. If it was just one of these, I would have probably shrugged it off. But as combination... And as I have said, the time "bug" if it is one, happened only in a super small handful of games of Catan and Ticket to ride only, even though I have played about three thousand games here in total. If there was a time bug, I would assume it would be for clocks in any game since time reference works in the same way. Also, if it was based on a bug caused because of particular action, would not it be occurring in games which are similar to at least some of their elements (like Yahtzee, King of Tokyo and Catan where you roll dices for both, or in Catan and Stone age where you have cards called "resource cards" if the term itself would make an issue with another reference in the play sheet leading to clock freezing for example)? And even if that was the case, it still is extremely unlikely to go not just frozen but going backwards. If a computer game with time freezes, time might freeze as well or might go the normal flow with just the screen frozen. Like it happens in FIFA. And again, clock to go the wrong way is something I have never seen in any game. Cannot find any usual circumstance where it should be like this.
Okay, I agree computers do get bugged by something minor sometimes, but such small numbers, like 4 and 5? Or even if we say an hour where you have just from 01 to 59? No decimals of second displayed so to say calculations go a little wild about it.
And last point of view from my perspective - if we say it is a bug, how it is not mentioned anywhere on here? Or at least I could not find anything written about it through search. Too strange given it only happens in specific games and such an extremely small portion of them based on how much I have played. 10-12 games of several thousand is way too little if it was a consisting issue. Plus, I cannot recall anything similar happened until maybe two years ago. Will look game times and if they go once again backward, I would have to do something about it.
In this given case, the player also behaved erratic and somewhat aggressive even before I raised a word about what happens on the table and after that - laugh and silence, even gave up on playing as felt himself guilty of kind. Just said "finish it off quickly" or something like this. Irony? Do not know how it all summed up on the same player in a single game. To me it is most definitely not a mere coincidence. Game etiquettes on here mean nothing for some people as so many games have shown me how they turn it to a stand-alone point for themselves to justify their actions by behaving out of manner and trying to push it from others to follow their suit. And in this case he did provoked a reaction of the two of us having to say a thing about it in a game where you do not really use chat anyway.

[nik592]

If there was a time bug, I would assume it would be for clocks in any game since time reference works in the same way.

It would, but likely needs a specific set of circumstances - that is, a player on the right point in time to trigger a rounding bug and whatever else needs to happen. Rounding bugs are inconsistent by their very nature - the issue is that sometimes a computer looks at a decimal number and rounds up, and other times it rounds down, it has to do with how it is representing the number in its memory, which is not exactly the same as how we conceptualise numbers. The thing is, computers don't often work with rounded numbers behind the scenes, they can remember all the decimals, so they do. It's only when humans ask them to display things nicely that we tend to see rounding bugs.

Okay, I agree computers do get bugged by something minor sometimes, but such small numbers, like 4 and 5? Or even if we say an hour where you have just from 01 to 59? No decimals of second displayed so to say calculations go a little wild about it.

Your time in the game does not go from exactly 5 days to exactly 4 days. 4 days means somewhere between 4 and 5 days - you can see this by how the time moves on the graph in the replay. So there is almost always a decimal portion in play (4.something days), hence, rounding bugs could occur. I am only speculating based on what I know about how code works sometimes, it could be something else entirely. But the graph from the replay clearly shows everyone's time proceeds downwards. No one (not Krogul or anyone else) had an increase in time at any point.

I'd probably agree from what you said that the player wasn't behaving the best, but that does not mean they was doing anything to influence the time. That said, as much as not revealing information is within the rules of Catan, I would argue that voicing an opinion that another player has resources they aren't disclosing is also within the rules if not done in an insulting way (and if it was, report them). That's their opinion, they're entitled to it, and what the other player does in response to that is up to them. Were it me, I'd shrug and say nothing and continue on with the game. But I don't think there's some grand plan going on here - hacking his time minimally, saying someone isn't being fully transparent about what resources they have, that feels like a really poor attempt at trying to gain something out of the system - which also, they didn't, since you won the game anyway.

And last point of view from my perspective - if we say it is a bug, how it is not mentioned anywhere on here? Or at least I could not find anything written about it through search. Too strange given it only happens in specific games and such an extremely small portion of them based on how much I have played. 10-12 games of several thousand is way too little if it was a consisting issue. Plus, I cannot recall anything similar happened until maybe two years ago. Will look game times and if they go once again backward, I would have to do something about it.

It's probably not mentioned because it is an infrequent bug (if it is one at all). Sometimes bugs are like that - they need really specific circumstances in order to occur and those circumstances sometimes don't happen very often. So they don't get noticed and don't get reported. I'd also say that if it does turn out to be a bug that happens that rarely, the effort to fix is unlikely to be worth it, especially since it's most likely just a display issue and not an actual issue with mistiming, since your game clearly shows no one had any increase in their time.

[Jeff de Matiss]

And last point of view from my perspective - if we say it is a bug, how it is not mentioned anywhere on here? Or at least I could not find anything written about it through search. Too strange given it only happens in specific games and such an extremely small portion of them based on how much I have played. 10-12 games of several thousand is way too little if it was a consisting issue. Plus, I cannot recall anything similar happened until maybe two years ago. Will look game times and if they go once again backward, I would have to do something about it.

It's probably not mentioned because it is an infrequent bug (if it is one at all). Sometimes bugs are like that - they need really specific circumstances in order to occur and those circumstances sometimes don't happen very often. So they don't get noticed and don't get reported. I'd also say that if it does turn out to be a bug that happens that rarely, the effort to fix is unlikely to be worth it, especially since it's most likely just a display issue and not an actual issue with mistiming, since your game clearly shows no one had any increase in their time.
[/quote]


Oh, yes, that is. I agree completely! Just was wondering about what that weird issue is all about. I know that on Windows XP there was a way to change manually your time zone which also changes automatically your computer's notifications (if they were coming from Windows system directly). So I am peculiar as to whether and how exactly the server and internet browsers in general take your time zome from. Because my only reasonable theory for this (if we say it not a bug) is if the player could actually change time zones of his computer so the server takes his new one as current and kind of resets the clock, say to an hour earlier. However, I do think that
a) this is quite unlikely to be since if your time zone is once gotten by the server, it should I think be consistently being pin-pointed even if you change your computer's one;
b) if by any chance you could do that and you might get few hours this way, this would probably be the most retarded "strategy" I have ever heard of in gaming. Also one that could very possibly be able to be discovered fairly easy when one messes it up;
c) if this is the exact case, then would it be considered bug of the system because it simply could not work properly with time zones being changed or it would be considered gaining an advantage on purpose, exploiting a weak point? Either case, strange votes to be said about it.

Maybe this issue is lesser than all of this. However, it highly frustrated me, only fired more by the player's aggressive way of play by taunting others about non-existant rules (as to resource types in hand are not at all revealed and it is never written than you have to!). Just keep players like this at eye as such behaviour discrupts everyone's way of having good time. Board games are the last place we need to set up nerves! It should all be fairly fun and casual try-to-win. Not have-to-win-by-all-means scenarios.

[mrdoctor]

Conclusions from this long thread for those who don't want to read the whole thing:
* timestamps from the game log demonstrate that all players time declined as normal and no-one had time added according to the graph generated.
* a player didn't understand the rules of Catan and didn't realise some info could be hidden, and was rude about it