This game is unplayable!!!

[vveedd]

After long consideration, unfortunately, must say that this game is unplayable in multiplayer mode except, maybe, TCP/IP. As you already know, there are 3 modes: TCP/IP, Hot seat and PBEM. For TCP/IP I have no remarks because it is only playable mode. I have said –maybe- only because for this mode you have to have time which working and family man like me don’t have. Second mode is Hot Seat – which is playable only if you have brother, neighbor, friend nearby etc. AND time issue is still an issue for man like me. Third mode and most popular today (especially for turn based games) is PBEM but without some kind of control mechanism for reloading it is absolutely unusable. The cheat opportunities are enormous: You can reload game until you get desirable diplomatic or tech results, until you get good combat results in crucial battles or you can reload game for recon purposes which Fog of war option makes unnecessary. BUT – without Fog of war game is almost unplayable in any multiplayer mode. So Hubert, PLEASE, consider some kind of control mechanism for reload cheating and by this I mean overwriting SAV file in e-mail folder with copy in player mailbox. I know that SC2 game has implemented some kind of control for, let say, classical reloading.

[TaoJah]

Well, I don't know how many people actually cheat, but it's possible to stop it by the developer only. Something like a counter and a game-identifier (based on the registration key and timestamp of the starting game) where the counter would be stored somewhere outside the save games and highered by 1 everytime it that game get's loaded.

But I don't know if it's easy to do and Cater never said anything about it. Perhaps the title of your post (which is a little bit exagerated, hehe) will draw his attention.

[ChrisND]

In case you didnt notice vveedd, there is a reload counter in place. You can see it when you recieve an opponents turn. It shoudl say "0", or "1" if the game was switched from tcp to pbem. Any number present tells how many times your opponent has reloaded the game.

[hellraiser]

you can do a 2nd install of sc2 on your PC - you can always use the 2nd one for switching to TCP or whatever - point is if someone wants to cheat , he will - sure thing it's a waste of time but some guys probably wanna win no matter what - ya gotta live with that -> one strong reason why I never play PBEM

[Bromley]

The biggest problem is that not everyone plays the game on the same machine every turn. How do you deal with the situation where a player is using two different installs of the game (one at home, one in the office)?

The only sure-fire solution that I can think of (and I may well be wrong here) is for a Battlefront hosted server that games are uploaded/downloaded to/from from within the application. That way the server can verify how many times a file has been accessed and the issue of which install accessed it disappears.

Anyone know what the odds of a BF server being available for this sort of thing? Files would only have to be kept on it until accessed (to keep size down, unaccessed files could be deleted after X weeks), so storage costs would (I assume) be almost zero. I've no idea about transfer/bandwidth costs or, perhaps more importantly, maintenance costs.

A spin-off idea would be the ability to use a third party server for this sort of thing, i.e. Panzerliga (if they'd do it).

EDIT: A related subject - the ability to replay the replay!

[ January 09, 2007, 02:43 AM: Message edited by: Bromley ]

[vveedd]

Originally posted by TaoJah:

Perhaps the title of your post (which is a little bit exagerated, hehe) will draw his attention.

Maybe it is exagerated, but it is a serious problem.

Originally posted by Normal Dude:

In case you didnt notice vveedd, there is a reload counter in place. You can see it when you recieve an opponents turn. It shoudl say "0", or "1" if the game was switched from tcp to pbem. Any number present tells how many times your opponent has reloaded the game.

Dude, I did notice but please read my post again. I am talking about overwriting SAV file with copy from mailbox. You can do this as many time as you want and you will always have 0 reloads.

Originally posted by Bromley:

The biggest problem is that not everyone plays the game on the same machine every turn. How do you deal with the situation where a player is using two different installs of the game (one at home, one in the office)?

The only sure-fire solution that I can think of (and I may well be wrong here) is for a Battlefront hosted server that games are uploaded/downloaded to/from from within the application. That way the server can verify how many times a file has been accessed and the issue of which install accessed it disappears.

Anyone know what the odds of a BF server being available for this sort of thing? Files would only have to be kept on it until accessed (to keep size down, unaccessed files could be deleted after X weeks), so storage costs would (I assume) be almost zero. I've no idea about transfer/bandwidth costs or, perhaps more importantly, maintenance costs.

A spin-off idea would be the ability to use a third party server for this sort of thing, i.e. Panzerliga (if they'd do it).

EDIT: A related subject - the ability to replay the replay!

Excellent idea. I have suggested this to Hubert long time ago but he had no concrete plans about it.

[Epaulard]

Play only with ppl you trust

[Canuck_TAR]

**Dude, I did notice but please read my post again. I am talking about overwriting SAV file with copy from mailbox. You can do this as many time as you want and you will always have 0 reloads.**

LOL...........if people do this then they have more time on there hands than they know what to do with.

[TaoJah]

Originally posted by Bromley:

The biggest problem is that not everyone plays the game on the same machine every turn.

Hmmm, that makes it harder indeed.

A Battlefront server would be nice indeed. At 1MB bandwidth per save game, that can not cost alot, but still. It's a purely economical decision, really. How many people play PBEM and how big of a percentage stops playing because the cheating (or perhaps even more important, how many players don't buy the game or won't buy SCIII because of it).

I don't think you'll break even, even with a low cost server...

[Lars]

Originally posted by vveedd:

Dude, I did notice but please read my post again. I am talking about overwriting SAV file with copy from mailbox. You can do this as many time as you want and you will always have 0 reloads.

Save email to floppy, cheat all you want.

There's always a way...

[SeaMonkey]

Ha Ha ! If this is the only time you get cheated, misrepresented, disinfranchised, taken to the cleaners, etc. etc in this life.

Consider yourself lucky!

[Bill101]

I don't think cheating is a big problem. Some players undoubtedly do it, I caught one out last year when he sent me the turn where he captured Paris as Axis and it said that he'd reloaded it six times!

Still, cheating will only help if both players are fairly evenly balanced. If one is much better than the other then they will still win, even if their opponent reloads every turn ten times, because it's having a good long term strategy that counts the most.

[vveedd]

Originally posted by Bill101:

I don't think cheating is a big problem. Some players undoubtedly do it, I caught one out last year when he sent me the turn where he captured Paris as Axis and it said that he'd reloaded it six times!

Still, cheating will only help if both players are fairly evenly balanced. If one is much better than the other then they will still win, even if their opponent reloads every turn ten times, because it's having a good long term strategy that counts the most.

I agree with you about long term strategy but only if game has very little luck factor involved in gameplay mechanism. In SC2 I don't worry about combat results cheating (in this case you can win with good long term strategy), I am worried about diplomatic and tech results (especially about tech results). What you can do if your opponent has in 1940 year heavy tanks at level 4 or 5, for example? This cheating seriously is breaking game balance.

[Bill101]

I've not seen that Vedran, but I only play with a few people so maybe I'm lucky.

I agree that if someone had a high tech like that in 1940 it would be a bit rough. That said, in two games I played as Axis I got IT level 5 by the middle of 1941 without cheating, so some good results can occur naturally. I still managed to lose both games!

And don't forget that if you want a game with me sometime just let me know.

[ January 13, 2007, 01:32 AM: Message edited by: Bill101 ]

[vveedd]

Originally posted by Bill101:

And don't forget that if you want a game with me sometime just let me know.

Of course Bill. Our games were very good and you are good and honest player. I am playing one game now and because my time for play is very short can't play one more. I will, certainly, contact you when I will have time for one more game. Thx.

[jon_j_rambo]

Heavy Tanks +5 in 1940? Wow, buy a lotto ticket.

[arado234]

Really.Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

[TaoJah]

Originally posted by arado234:

Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

I got the same problem : I get ALOT less tech hits then normal in both my e-mail games so far. Not just a bit less, nono, ALOT ALOT ALOT less.

When it was only one game, I thought "well, bad luck, good for the other guy". But in the second game it's exactly the same.

In all my AI games (and I played alot), there was not one single game were I had such slow tech advances then in my two PBEM games.

Either I am the unluckiest PBEM player in the world or there is something wrong, I tell you.

[Desert Dave]

Originally posted by TaoJah:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by arado234:

Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

I got the same problem : I get ALOT less tech hits then normal in both my e-mail games so far. Not just a bit less, nono, ALOT ALOT ALOT less.

When it was only one game, I thought "well, bad luck, good for the other guy". But in the second game it's exactly the same.

In all my AI games (and I played alot), there was not one single game were I had such slow tech advances then in my two PBEM games.

Either I am the unluckiest PBEM player in the world or there is something wrong, I tell you. </font>

[vveedd]

Originally posted by arado234:

Really.Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

This is not the point. Point is that you can (if you are dishonest player) reload your turn 10 times to get tech you wanted and after that you can say – hey, I am just lucky. And you can’t prove opposite because this luck factor concept in tech development. This concept is wrong, to my opinion.

[TaoJah]

Originally posted by vveedd:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by arado234:

Really.Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

This is not the point. Point is that you can (if you are dishonest player) reload your turn 10 times to get tech you wanted and after that you can say – hey, I am just lucky. And you can’t prove opposite because this luck factor concept in tech development. This concept is wrong, to my opinion. </font>

[pzgndr]

Point is ... if you are dishonest player ... you can say – hey, I am just lucky. And you can’t prove opposite

Huh? What you can prove is that you are a dishonest player, plain and simple. If you need to cheat to play a game against another player or the AI, you're pathetic. There is no excuse for cheating, and cheaters should not be tolerated. :mad:

this luck factor concept in tech development ... is wrong, to my opinion.

Well that's your opinion. The luck is there for replayability, not for historical accuracy. If players do not care for it as currently implemented, they can turn off research completely via game options or try a mod where max chits per tech area are limited to 1 or 2. There ARE options.

[vveedd]

Originally posted by pzgndr:

Huh? What you can prove is that you are a dishonest player, plain and simple. If you need to cheat to play a game against another player or the AI, you're pathetic. There is no excuse for cheating, and cheaters should not be tolerated. :mad: [/QB]

Your conclusion is pathetic. I am trying to make this game better by fighting against dishonest players and reloading cheat and you have concluded that I am dishonest player?? If I am dishonest player this game will be perfect for me and I will not say a word.

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by Desert Dave:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by TaoJah:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by arado234:

Im playing 1 pbem as germany and have had only 1 tech hit for the whole game.Its now summer 1942.

I got the same problem : I get ALOT less tech hits then normal in both my e-mail games so far. Not just a bit less, nono, ALOT ALOT ALOT less.

When it was only one game, I thought "well, bad luck, good for the other guy". But in the second game it's exactly the same.

In all my AI games (and I played alot), there was not one single game were I had such slow tech advances then in my two PBEM games.

Either I am the unluckiest PBEM player in the world or there is something wrong, I tell you. </font>

[jon_j_rambo]

@DD --- That was a masterpiece! I caught it all!