* cheating?

[JohnnyCyclops]

To be honest there's just a fundamental difference between players who enjoy using deep deduction techniques to solve puzzles, and those who want to play a game about testing and then making deductions from the results; ultimately the two types of players are looking for different experiences from the game and I'm not sure there's a satisfactory way to reconcile the two, other than limiting people only to play opponents who are looking for the same experience.

I agree on this, and on the rest of that recent post. It feels like a "two speed" game. I've not played recently in part because of this aspect but also because I find some of the rules unclear, which you and I have exchanged notes on and I don't intend to rehash again (and I'm fairly sure you won't want to either).

I think the designers and BGA would do well to review how the virtual implementation has gone over its first few months, how it's being played, and see if there are opportunities to improve.

[Romain672]

I will put that again, but for people who want to deduce more things with actions, you can look at others deductive games, most closer being in my opinion https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=breakthecode .

[Jellby]

Solvers are easily available, all competitive features (ranking, arena) should be disabled: *

*moderator edit: please do not link ressources to help players cheat

[challen]

Break the code+1. It's three people game so it’s less stressful.
It’s so hard for some deduction, sometimes I over deduct it and cross out correct verifiers…
If I memorized the deduction on the forum: ex if something <3 and something >1 is the same color, I’ll lose a game finding out it’s not certain…haha.

[Jellby]

*moderator edit: please do not link ressources to help players cheat

Please disable competitive features for this game, because players can find the resources easily, whether I link them or not, and I don't think it's possible to prove they used them.

[lordalx]

Hello. In accordance with the publisher, Turing Machine is no longer a competitive game after numerous abuses that prevented players from having a completely enjoyable experience because of online solvers.
Not only that, but turn-based games can no longer be made; they can only be made in real time.

[poptasticboy]

Stopping competitive features is understandable, but stopping turn-based games? Ridiculous! I will only ever play this game turn-based; that's the only way that's enjoyable for me.

I've been a huge supporter of this game, but that decision completely kills online play for me.

Please reconsider the turn-based games decision!

[Sleevs]

Stopping competitive features is understandable, but stopping turn-based games? Ridiculous! I will only ever play this game turn-based; that's the only way that's enjoyable for me.

I've been a huge supporter of this game, but that decision completely kills online play for me.

Please reconsider the turn-based games decision!

Agree with this 100%. I NEVER play games in real-time -- it's annoying! I don't play like that. I had several games of Turing Machine going with one of my long-distance friends and now we can't rematch because real-time is our only option. That is VERY FRUSTRATING. Please fix.

Ideally, I would like to be able to play competitive games of it with him. We know each other and no one is cheating but it's fun to be able to see how we're each doing at learning the game compared to each other by looking at ELO.

But if you won't let us do that, at least don't force us to play in real time -- just a friendly game with NO TIME RESTRICTIONS makes total sense. Making every game real time is very very ill-thought-out. Let friends play against each other without time penalties and a horrible pink hourglass spinning in our faces.

Thank you.

[AlBartho]

It seems that playing turn-based games is possible again, that´s a good thing.

A shame that tournaments are off the board, I started two just after TM left beta.

I can´t get my head around the cheaters. How sad must one be to do this in the first place, how reckless must one be to spoil a game for many others, and finally: How dumb must one be to cheat all along and risk detection?

[LargoLaGrande]

Hello everybody, I will share my personal experience about "solvers" and people cheating. I will try to be short.

In my opinion, if somebody is using "solvers" for me it's not a problem. Basically, I suppose, a solver tries to do the same "deep deduction" we "humans" try to do with pen and paper, or Excel, or other home made tools (I'm a software engineer and it's very funny to write code to solve some Turing Machine games).
I'm saying that even with "solvers" the game is fair. A solver can't beat a human, it's basically quicker in sorting out possible solutions, but not better.
If some people want to use a "solver" and think it is funny (and I don't), it's ok for me. At least if I play well we will probably tie.

In my opinion the majority of people complaining about cheaters simply didn't understand or didn't like the "deep deduction", that for me is the main attractive of this type of games, and think they were cheated.

Now, about real cheaters.
I was suspicious about a game, a player beaten me with one verifier less than the minimum that was possible for me, I was not so expert in the game so I asked for explanations and I was not convinced, but thought it was my fault. The same player beaten my in the same way some days after, so I got very suspicious.
I studied a little bit the code of the page (as I said, I know how to code) and found how to cheat.
I can confirm what NachitoRus wrote, probably we found the same method:

[...] Now, regarding CHEATING: I've actually very recently found out that there is indeed a way to cheat beyond using brute force software. I started investigating after I saw truly absurd guessing chances (I have myself gone for guessing quite a few times based on probability to avoid ties while trying to get the 50 wins in a row achievement, unfortunately failing many times) and with help from a friend we realized there is a way to instantly know the solution. I have written to the BGA game developer about this directly and I hope he will fix it soon. I have tested it against people who i know are using it (to avoid losing unfairly) and also analysed already finished games and it totally works, although it would require some time to have a complete dictionary of solutions. [...]

I played other games with at least 2 players that are cheating 100%, their pattern is the same: they wait your moves, if you use 3 verifiers they solve with 2, if you use 2 verifiers they solve with 1, otherwise they solve with 0 verifiers. I even tried not to play and my opponent didn't played at all, and kicked me out of the game at the moment my remaining time (and also his time) became red. They never use more than 2 verifiers, because they want to be sure to win, even if the game is very difficult and a "not cheater" player requires a lot of verifiers.

They are ruining the game for everybody, so please fix this.

In the meantime I decided to cheat against those players, to have at least a tie.

I saw that they are in the tournaments starting today, to ruin their fun I've decided to write to their opponents, in private, the solution of the games, maybe they will stop to cheat.

After all, I don't like the closure of the Arena or "ELO" points, but I can understand the decision.
But please give us back tournaments! They are funny, even with cheaters!