Cheating is legal, can't even report

[Stigazzi]

If a player plays in Arena against his friends (game of 2 players, you both get in at the same time and you will match up against each other 100% of the times), and they let him blatantly win... and I mean absolutely clear kingmaking, without any shadow of a doubt, so for political reasons he can be at the top of the chart, there is nothing you can do. You can only give red thumbs tto his friends for kingmaking, but there is no way to report that conduct. You cannot report the winning player, and you cannot report their friends, just red thumb them.

Is there anything else that can be made? I mean, the games and the moves are really really obvious. But still, the guy gets to be untouchable at the top, with lots and lots fo arranged wins.

Any ideas?

[Meeplelowda]

there is nothing you can do.

How do you know it's a friend and not the same person controlling both accounts? Multi-accounting can be and has been reported and players have had their accounts reset because of it.

so for political reasons he can be at the top of the chart

What on earth are you even talking about here?

[Stigazzi]

there is nothing you can do.

How do you know it's a friend and not the same person controlling both accounts? Multi-accounting can be and has been reported and players have had their accounts reset because of it.

so for political reasons he can be at the top of the chart

What on earth are you even talking about here?

you are right, it might be a multi account, but i have no proof for that. What is really really obvious is that some accounts (himself or not) play against this guy and even after having won they dont close the game and let him win instead.
The thing is, there is no way to fight back against this. It is not possible to report them. And so doing that, they get to have this "friend" and his flag at the Top. Which is clearly the whole thing.

*

*Moderation Edit: please do not use the Forums to call out players, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion.

[JimBut]

What do you mean by "it is not possible to report them"?

It is possible to report people for this if you believe the evidence is strong

[Meeplelowda]

What do you mean by "it is not possible to report them"?

It is possible to report people for this if you believe the evidence is strong

They mean that if you go down the reporting funnel there is an option that reads "[username] helps another player to win the game by playing as a team," i.e., kingmaking. But if you click on it you get this message: "The best way to combat Kingmaking is to give the Kingmaker player a red thumb (public red thumbs). There is no use filling in a report here: please give a red thumb to the one who made the kingmaking moves."

[BarnardsStar]

The reason BGA doesn’t do anything because it’s hard to know 1200 games well enough to recognize kingmaking in any arbitrary game. So, an idea I’d like to float before making it a formal suggestion or anything…

Each game has “gurus” who know the game well enough to nominate Arena formats for the next season. What if kingmaking accusations got forwarded to the gurus? They know the game well enough to recognize something like that. I don’t know how many gurus there are per but it seems like more than just a handful. Of course, I also don’t know how often kingmaking accusations get made, so it may be there are just too many even for the gurus.

Thoughts?

[Meeplelowda]

Each game has “gurus” who know the game well enough to nominate Arena formats for the next season.

The label "guru" that they place on those players is misleading because:
1) You don't have to know a game well to become a guru. Being a guru is purely based on how often you play relative to everyone who plays that game. I became a "guru" for Twin Tin Bots after playing (and losing) one rated game because for all intents and purposes no one plays that game.
2) Becoming a guru is based on all your games played, not just Arena games. You don't even have to play in Arena to become a guru (see point 1).

So the notion that gurus are a specially anointed group uniquely situated to rule on kingmaking just because they get to vote on an Arena format is mistaken. A better suited criterion would be having expert or master status.

Of course, I also don’t know how often kingmaking accusations get made, so it may be there are just too many even for the gurus.

I'm guessing people cry about it all the time (just look at the Catan forum), hence them basically blocking it as something you can report. I said in another thread that some things in terms of service are aspirational. You hope your users will behave a certain way, but there's no practical way to make them do it. This is an example.

Also, because of the way Elo works on here based on the position you place in, there can be an incentive to help the first player win faster if you aren't going to win so someone below you doesn't have time to catch you. Is it kingmaking if your motivation is your own finishing position?

[BarnardsStar]

So the notion that gurus are a specially anointed group uniquely situated to rule on kingmaking just because they get to vote on an Arena format is mistaken. A better suited criterion would be having expert or master status.

Interesting. It does figure that for some games around here being in the “top 100 most frequent players” doesn’t mean much, although by a similar measure there are some games with no experts or masters.

Of course, I also don’t know how often kingmaking accusations get made, so it may be there are just too many even for the gurus.

I'm guessing people cry about it all the time, hence them basically blocking it as something you can report.

Yeah, i was thinking about this after I made my initial post. I think there’d have to be some sort of penalty for crying wolf. And since they don’t know who’s crying wolf or not, you’d probably have to penalize everybody who made an accusation that was deemed false.

[Meeplelowda]

although by a similar measure there are some games with no experts or masters.

True. Sometimes because it doesn't get played enough for someone to climb that high. Sometimes because the game is too high variance to climb that high.

Yeah, i was thinking about this after I made my initial post. I think there’d have to be some sort of penalty for crying wolf.

There are penalties for crying wolf, which has led to multi-page forum threads started by lupine users complaining about not getting an adequate explanation for their designation.

[BarnardsStar]

There are penalties for crying wolf, which has led to multi-page forum threads started by lupine users complaining about not getting an adequate explanation for their designation.

Oh. OH!