Cheating

[ChiefPointThief]

ok

Just to be clear: Do you challenge the moderators about that?

This is odd. Are you trying to get him to say he is in violation? If you feel op is doing something wrong why not flag them?

And what would the challenge be? There’s no way for him to know if it’s under review. If it was reviewed and not considered. If it was never reviewed at all because it was deemed lacking evidence etc.

[Meeplelowda]

I have seen players claim to get status on reports they’ve filed.

You can go to the person's profile and see if the report is still active, but it's not like they send you a status write-up or something.

The only thing close to that is if you report something through the forum (as opposed to someone's profile), you get a notification when the report is closed. But it doesn't tell you what the result was. You have to go investigate that yourself.

[Silene]

I have seen players claim to get status on reports they’ve filed. Personally I never heard back on a report.

I think nobody gets any status reports. But you might have seen players claim they saw the results of their reports. That's because they find a way to find out. There's no official support to work-arounds like that and who knows how long they let them exist... However for one way see here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 34#p260234

[ChiefPointThief]

Well I guess op got the attention he wanted and now his original thread was locked lol. I find it interesting that threads in violation can last in subforums for months and majority of attention is only focused on main forums

When you have a case like this that may appear like it is a no brainer for players but they see no penalty for the accused and get no notification as to why that is problematic. Then in the players mind they figure maybe they didn’t submit it right, or it didn’t go through etc. so they file again. But now doing so they are actually in more trouble than the accused because bga looks at them sideways for filing multiple reports. The process needs upgrading! A while back an admin said there would be changes but it’s still the same old.

An admin responded here https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 2&start=10

[tbhp]

I guess they just expect people to not enquire about it and just forget it. But that's not how human nature works. When you report something, obviously you are gonna want to follow how the case develops.

A consequence of that is that people may have less incentive to report bad behavior. If you can't see the concrete results of your actions, it feels less real somewhat.

[Michael417]

I definitely got the moderators attention with that locked thread. It feels like BGA is quicker to crack down and punish players for talking about or calling out the cheating profiles than they are to penalize the actual cheating itself.

[Meeplelowda]

It feels like BGA is quicker to crack down and punish players for talking about or calling out the cheating profiles than they are to penalize the actual cheating itself.

It is. Because it's quicker to evaluate that.

[FrankJones]

Something to keep in mind:

When presented with irrefutable evidence, BGA comes down hard and fast with the most severe punishment.

But, truly irrefutable evidence is often rare. Cheaters can get creative, I suppose.

[Meeplelowda]

Something to keep in mind:

When presented with irrefutable evidence, BGA comes down hard and fast with the most severe punishment.

This.

I keep seeing so many "BGA never does anything about cheating" posts. Just today two accounts colluding in Ark Nova Arena were closed. And I've had a successful report for Connect Four. It's a game I've never even played on here, but someone was complaining in the forums about a cheater and when I looked at it they were cheating in the dumbest way possible (simply having their alt account let them get 4 in a row in one column every game without ever blocking). I'm glad the practice now seems to be to close both the main and the alt account. In the Connect 4 case only the alt was closed, but the main just had its Elo reset.

The problem is everyone thinks their evidence is irrefutable and will not accept any other interpretation.

[ChiefPointThief]

Something to keep in mind:

When presented with irrefutable evidence, BGA comes down hard and fast with the most severe punishment.

This.

I keep seeing so many "BGA never does anything about cheating" posts. Just today two accounts colluding in Ark Nova were closed. And I've had a successful report for Connect Four. It's a game I've never even played on here, but someone was complaining in the forums about a cheater and when I looked at it they were cheating in the dumbest way possible (simply having their alt account let them get 4 in a row in one column every game without ever blocking).

The problem is everyone thinks their evidence is irrefutable and will not accept any other interpretation.

Closed because the cheaters deleted their accounts after getting caught (because I’ve seen that numerous times before) or closed because bga closed them? I don’t believe bga closes accounts for cheating. I know of accounts that have been punished for cheating numerous times and are still active.

Bga does threaten to ban accounts for continuously filing appeals but even with that I know of an account that had numerous appeals denied for cheating. And bga banned them for life. Not deleted. Meaning they just can’t talk ever.

What is being considered as irrefutable evidence? And what is the “hardest” penalty? From what I’ve seen multi accounting only gets a -30 karma. And the elo reset or arena reset is inconsistent. Sometimes the reset is to 100 other times it’s 0 but when it’s in games that only caps in he 300s this isn’t a big deal. The cheaters can get that back in a few days. Sometimes the arena score isn’t even reset and arena is most cheaters main goal.