Cheaters Can't Stop Arena

[Palapapa]

At least two players cheated using multiple accounts or match fixing with a friend to boost their ranking in this season of Can't Stop Arena. Several of us who manage to get a good ranking without cheating reported them weeks ago and moderation did.... nothing!
The cheating is obvious and the games were mentioned in the reports.

They are still there in the top 10.
Why is this? If those players don't get punished, then all 2 players arena ranking means nothing. All you need is create a 2n account and play against each other to do 20 wins in a row.
It's really frustrating for those who try hard to reach the first spots.

[xxerox]

Its site policy to not punish cheaters. At least two of the top 5 players with most points on the site are cheaters and mechanic abusers and they have been for years.

[aesche]

Competitive play on BGA is a farce, and none of the owners cares.

[Palapapa]

it's disgusting...

[Tisaac]

Competitive play on BGA is a farce, and none of the owners cares.

Source ?

And how exactly would you guys handle that if you were at their place ? AntiCheating seems like a complete waste of time for me for format such as Arena or general ranking. Only tournaments can be reasonnably checked IMO.

[Ze Monstah]

Competitive play on BGA is a farce, and none of the owners cares.

Source ?

And how exactly would you guys handle that if you were at their place ? AntiCheating seems like a complete waste of time for me for format such as Arena or general ranking. Only tournaments can be reasonnably checked IMO.

Ban the ones who do it, when you see a lot of people come up with strong arguments and proof, against those same players?
And hire 2 or 3 people (unless voluntarily offering) who can do only that, for a couple of hours per day?

Instead of... I don't know... always pretending there's not enough proof and that "most kingmaking and cheating accusations have no strong arguments" (when in fact, there are a lot that have)?

"No time" and "Chance of not enough proof" are not excuses, in my opinion.

[Tisaac]

So how much would you pay for that feature ?
"Lot of people" how much is that ?
How would you be able to prove it ? You realize how many players will complain about abusive cheat moderation ?....

I clearly dont want my premium suscription to support such a waste of resources. There are many rooms for UX improvement that have far higher priority and good ratio time/efficacity.

[Ze Monstah]

So how much would you pay for that feature ?
"Lot of people" how much is that ?
How would you be able to prove it ? You realize how many players will complain about abusive cheat moderation ?....

I clearly dont want my premium suscription to support such a waste of resources. There are many rooms for UX improvement that have far higher priority and good ratio time/efficacity.

I would pay 10 euros per hour, I guess, but I don't have the info the owners of the site or the administrators/moderators have, in order to give a concise answer, so... I could only imagine, I don't know.
Again... maybe there are volunteers! I don't get why you are dragging what I said towards the money.

There are cases when 4 or 5 (decent non-problematic players, not like me), accuse a certain player with strong arguments and nothing is done, ok?
A person cannot even report a player for cheating, the system doesn't allow that (I assume in order to not waste time); the players can only use the "multiple accounts" thing.

Also... a player who was heavily cheating games of Love Letter and Werewolves, with enough proof brought, months ago, was only recently brought to 0, on ELO on all games, but the BGA XP score remained the same, and also... no (serious) ban!
Why would you reset all ELOs to 0, but not the BGA XP score, and why wouldn't you also harshly ban such player? This is beyond me...
Also... I just saw that a player who won a couple of Backgammon Arena seasons, accused by many, of cheating (with concise proof), was now banned until 26th. september, but no ELOs reset, and no BGA XP reset.
Why would you do just that?

There are ways to prove it. A lot...
But people need TIME to watch replays, moves, etc.
When you see many players (again, decent, non-problematic) come like Wild African Dogs on a player, with arguments that also seem decent, and nothing is done... I think that is not ok.

Someone once said that it is ok to moderate a player forever, for smaller and smaller things, if (s)he was once reported and moderated, because that is how the justice in the world goes... :s
I think that based on this thinking, you could also work on cheaters, in Arena and Simple Gaming, right?
I mean... isn't that also injustice? (I mean... why spend time on moderating people for saying "croissant", "heh", etc., and not on trying to ban players heavily accused for cheating?)

If a good gaming site cannot work through constructive criticism, I think that is why some of the criticism sometimes becomes destructive.

Also, if you don't want your money to be spent on anti-cheating (again, the money was just an idea, that could be voluntarily done), perhaps you should play exclusively with cheaters, kingmakers and ELO boosters in all your games, to see how swell that feels.

[Tisaac]

I was asking how much you would pay as a user for that feature on BGA, since you said "hire 1 or 2 people". Hiring people would mean the premium will cost more, so I'm wondering how much extra the people would be ok to pay to have a better anti-cheat policy.

4 players accusing someone is really far from enough to make a strong argument. There have been many examples of players thinking that someone cheats in Carcassonne where he actually just knows how to play. You would need to make sure that the "reporting players" are expert at the game + trustworthy. Maybe that's one goal of the new Guru feature ?

Again, the main issue as you said is TIME. This requires far more time that a moderation system. Maybe the time can be shared along volonteers (which already means a pretty complex system to handle these volonteers (> 200 games) + not very reliable), but that's still a lot of time and it's hard to tell what would be the effect of this. Cheaters can just get smarter until it's pretty hard to distinguish them from strong players. It's even worse : it will take more and more time to find enough proof as the cheaters get smarter and smarter.

[Ze Monstah]

I was asking how much you would pay as a user for that feature on BGA, since you said "hire 1 or 2 people". Hiring people would mean the premium will cost more, so I'm wondering how much extra the people would be ok to pay to have a better anti-cheat policy.

4 players accusing someone is really far from enough to make a strong argument. There have been many examples of players thinking that someone cheats in Carcassonne where he actually just knows how to play. You would need to make sure that the "reporting players" are expert at the game + trustworthy. Maybe that's one goal of the new Guru feature ?

Again, the main issue as you said is TIME. This requires far more time that a moderation system. Maybe the time can be shared along volonteers (which already means a pretty complex system to handle these volonteers (> 200 games) + not very reliable), but that's still a lot of time and it's hard to tell what would be the effect of this. Cheaters can just get smarter until it's pretty hard to distinguish them from strong players. It's even worse : it will take more and more time to find enough proof as the cheaters get smarter and smarter.

Since I will probably never spend another penny on this (one of the best, if not best) gaming site(s), I don't have a good enough answer to your question.
If i was Premium again, for many months, I would assume: pay the same or 1 euro more, BGA earns the same or less, because they hire some people, but who can actually do stuff regarding cheating and moderations and stuff like those.

Again, the emphasis is not on the money (volunterering is ok) and not on an exact nr. of accusers (4 or 5), but on the results - the 2 examples I gave are good enough to express my idea, and the nr. of accusers was bigger.
Again, you just drag the situation towards money or some examples (like number of accusers) which were given just as example, to express a bigger picture.
I agree that concrete reasonable examples, time and attention are needed, but in my opinion, it should be done.

Yes, the time is precious, and people who engage in cheating may be too smart for the site to handle.
But if there is not enough interest in any of that, to begin with...
It's ok, though, that there is enough time to moderate people for saying "croissant" or other similar examples.