Catan: Friendly Robber Backstabbing

[BusterVA]

That's the game. In my eyes he did nothing wrong.

If a player asks to play friendly and everyone agrees, then that player robs you anyways, that is just not okay. While "technically" it is not cheating, that is terrible sportsman ship and people like that should receive penalties.

If you don't want to play friendly, don't. But don't say that you will.

[Theana]

Just reading this all as a third party I don't think your argument makes any sense. Why are you judging someone's ability based on their trade proposals sent? 1st- shouldn't you be looking at win rate or elo. 2nd- Wouldn't successful trades be more indicative of someone's ability to make trades. I've seen players throw up like 4 trade requests in a row just to get denied 4 times. They're not better at Catan for doing that. Theana's successful trade rate is actually higher than yours. 3rd- Successful trades also don't indicate a strong player. With trading it's always a win-win otherwise you wouldn't trade, but there is always a bigger winner (typically the one offering the trade since they can use the resources on that turn). Some people may have a high success rate with trading because they're offering trades that benefit other players more than they should.

Now if anyone cares for my opinion. If I roll a 7 I will target whoever I want regardless of if they want a friendly robber or not. My win rate is tied to yours (73%, my elo is ~30 lower though since I have fewer games played), and my successful trade rate is significantly higher (something I don't value, but just to prove that you can play without a friendly robber and still be liked at a table). If someone plays a friendly robber with their 7 I'll target the other player if they are on equal standing, but other than that it doesn't really go into my decision making. Winning is about slowing down your strongest competitors.

I am not sure why this player has any issue with me, and indeed for what concerns me, is speaking alone, but it is great that has a whole story about how I play looking at one stat, but thank you for your point of view.

I think that the nasty part most of us complain about is that playing becomes an unpleasant experience if you encounter some players. Some cannot really even ask nicely or have a decent conversation, ending up creating a toxic break from reality rather than a nice one

[zasfp]

I am not sure why this player has any issue with me, and indeed for what concerns me, is speaking alone, but it is great that has a whole story about how I play looking at one stat, but thank you for your point of view.

I think that the nasty part most of us complain about is that playing becomes an unpleasant experience if you encounter some players. Some cannot really even ask nicely or have a decent conversation, ending up creating a toxic break from reality rather than a nice one

Well don't we all just "speak alone". I don't think there's any teams in a forum. I just enjoy Catan because it has both a strategic and a social/political (not sure what you'd call it) aspect. I think over the board there's a lot more room to play purely strategically because you can also chat openly and just "win" over the other players by appearing nice. So then when there's forums discussing friendly robber and the impact of agreeing or disagreeing with it when you aren't even playing with a friendly robber rule set I get pretty interested in how people believe it impacts their games. Your moves rather than your words seem to carry more weight when playing online. Even so, I've noticed that people tend to target just whoever looks the most ahead rather than the person that played early robber attacks. Maybe not everyone has had this experience, but it's why I continue to play early robbers. I just haven't ever been targeted for doing so.

[Theana]

I am not sure why this player has any issue with me, and indeed for what concerns me, is speaking alone, but it is great that has a whole story about how I play looking at one stat, but thank you for your point of view.

I think that the nasty part most of us complain about is that playing becomes an unpleasant experience if you encounter some players. Some cannot really even ask nicely or have a decent conversation, ending up creating a toxic break from reality rather than a nice one

Well don't we all just "speak alone". I don't think there's any teams in a forum. I just enjoy Catan because it has both a strategic and a social/political (not sure what you'd call it) aspect. I think over the board there's a lot more room to play purely strategically because you can also chat openly and just "win" over the other players by appearing nice. So then when there's forums discussing friendly robber and the impact of agreeing or disagreeing with it when you aren't even playing with a friendly robber rule set I get pretty interested in how people believe it impacts their games. Your moves rather than your words seem to carry more weight when playing online. Even so, I've noticed that people tend to target just whoever looks the most ahead rather than the person that played early robber attacks. Maybe not everyone has had this experience, but it's why I continue to play early robbers. I just haven't ever been targeted for doing so.

I mean that I do not engage with the user, but I always like to confront different points of view.

The social aspect yes I totally agree with you, but I would put the FR issue on a different level: I can tell you how it impacts my game; not only playing 2vs1 it is a bit annoying at the least, but sometimes is the harassment in the chat, the passive aggressive messages that make the experience toxic