Cheater in duel and 7wa

[rpm002]

Of course, like everyone else, I was amazed that a player who was 100 points behind could suddenly move into first place in a matter of hours on the final day.
So I looked at his stats: 19 games in a row against the same player (how is that possible in the arena?), taking him from 1880 to 2003 points!

What's more, his last 4 wins were 4 wins that the opponent conceded. So I took a look at 2 of these 4 matches at random and it's well worth it! In these 2 matches, his opponent concedes victory in the middle of age2 for no reason at all, even though he still had every chance of winning!
It's utter rubbish and very frustrating for Rlai, even though we know he's the real winner!

Arrigo (see your last message) and the others: I hope all this doesn't stop you from continuing to play, it would be a pity for an exceptional cheat. But I share your disappointment that he is not disqualified ! He am also going to send a private message to an admin in order to express this.

Well said. It is about the most blatantly obvious form of cheating imaginable. Obviously BGA acknowledges this given they reset the user's ELO. I'm going to be optimistic and assume it just takes time to fix, but if they truly do not remedy the Arena result, that would be a significant failure that would reflect extremely poorly on BGA.

[Meeplelowda]

also yes:
"Would you be in favor of, say, a policy that you can publicly name a cheater, but if it is determined that you are wrong that you get a ban? "
to mitigate whining and people spamming the forum, there would need be a consequence, if publicly accusing and wrong. Since you can still just privately report it if you think someone is cheating. But here they also should have automatic checks, since player base is , presummangly, rising, as is the amount of different games. I pity the people that have to manually check those things. - so autochecks for basic things and things that discourage and frustrate cheaters could work in their favor.

I've recently seen two examples of a "cheating" allegation that was actually just cluelessness. One involved someone saying their opponent must have "hacked" their account to make a bad move, the other saying their opponent must have hacked BGA because they got points they shouldn't have. In one case the person just doesn't understand how some games automate moves when there are no choices to be made (no one hacked into their account to make the move). In the other case, the person simply didn't understand the rules of the game. It's these kinds of cheating complaints that are filtered out by a total ban on public accusations. I don't want cluelessness to be punished after the fact. I'd rather it just not be presented in the first place.

Also, about the automatic check, I'm not sure you're aware they did recently implement an auto-check for ELO boosting. While it did promptly catch some people who were blatantly boosting, it generated an enormous backlash because it is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel, and can easily sweep up legitimate players.

[silentProtest]

also yes:
"Would you be in favor of, say, a policy that you can publicly name a cheater, but if it is determined that you are wrong that you get a ban? "
to mitigate whining and people spamming the forum, there would need be a consequence, if publicly accusing and wrong. Since you can still just privately report it if you think someone is cheating. But here they also should have automatic checks, since player base is , presummangly, rising, as is the amount of different games. I pity the people that have to manually check those things. - so autochecks for basic things and things that discourage and frustrate cheaters could work in their favor.

I've recently seen two examples of a "cheating" allegation that was actually just cluelessness. One involved someone saying their opponent must have "hacked" their account to make a bad move, the other saying their opponent must have hacked BGA because they got points they shouldn't have. In one case the person just doesn't understand how some games automate moves when there are no choices to be made (no one hacked into their account to make the move). In the other case, the person simply didn't understand the rules of the game. It's these kinds of cheating complaints that are filtered out by a total ban on public accusations. I don't want cluelessness to be punished after the fact. I'd rather it just not be presented in the first place.

Also, about the automatic check, I'm not sure you're aware they did recently implement an auto-check for ELO boosting. While it did promptly catch some people who were blatantly boosting, it generated an enormous backlash because it is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel, and can easily sweep up legitimate players.

Thanks, gonna check this out.
Also a bad auto check doesnt mean they shouldnt try to improve on that. Depending on implementation it could just reset elo to people that prefer opponents on same level, and that level is rare or people that play 2v2, 3v3 games and prefer same teammates; if they go by often play with same people

[Meeplelowda]

Also a bad auto check doesnt mean they shouldnt try to improve on that.

I'm not arguing that they shouldn't try. In fact, it brought a smile to my face when boosters started posting questions about why their boosting wasn't working anymore (not that they framed it that way). But I recognize that innocent players will also be affected.

I obviously don't have access to the site analytics that would reveal how rampant boosting is, so maybe they will decide that they will endure the backlash. At the end of the day, there is probably only one game I'm good enough at to win 6 in a row, so I don't really have any skin in the game.

[silentProtest]

Well, I even got curious, after what Arrigo said, but it seems the cheater is there to stay

[Arrigo II]

Related thread in the general Discussion forum, still no answer from the admins or mods https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34439

[Vperwonders]

I’ve just created this report, let’s see if this way we will have any kind of official answer…

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=111588

[Chris Me]

As said before, I sent a private message to a "board game arena" admin about this topic. Here is the answer (received today):
"I have brought your concerns up to the team and we agree something needs to done about cases like this. Unfortunately, right now we are dealing with a serious server issue and will not be able to divert our attention to it this week. I have made a To-Do post about it on our internal messaging board and we will be addressing the problem in the future. I realise this is not the outcome you were hoping for for this season, but hopefully we will be able to apply a better solution for all cases in the future."

[Arrigo II]

As said before, I sent a private message to a "board game arena" admin about this topic. Here is the answer (received today):
"I have brought your concerns up to the team and we agree something needs to done about cases like this. Unfortunately, right now we are dealing with a serious server issue and will not be able to divert our attention to it this week. I have made a To-Do post about it on our internal messaging board and we will be addressing the problem in the future. I realise this is not the outcome you were hoping for for this season, but hopefully we will be able to apply a better solution for all cases in the future."

Thanks for updating us. If I'm understanding that correctly, they are not going to fix the results, which is a shame. Looking on the bright side, at least we had a first answer from the staff...

[tony97]

... the good thing with censoring out the names is that, you cant quickly look up the names of the accounts involved, if the main account (potentially) tries something again!


Oh wait, is that a good thing...?O.o