Ladder Site Online...

[Dauntless]

Ok,I had to step in here.

Insinuator:

There are many ways one could cheat in Wesnoth, and they are not related only to having a second account.

I am sorry if we lost your trust by making a second account. I did give it a lot of though before making opening the alias, and so did nani. We didnt feel that any harm would be done this way, we made sure not to manipulate anything for our advantage and tried to cause as little harm as possible.
I feel that towards trust, it is a lot more important the way how you behave, not if you break a simple rule or not. (as stated in my first contribution, many people break some ladder rule, often even without knowing it - wrong timer settings, using mappacks, no mirror eras and so on) So i didnt feel that i was cheating anybody only because i didnt obey one ladder rule.

However, I understand some people might be dissappointed by us doing so and I am sorry for that...

P.S.: I cant talk for many aliases, but try to think what can lead people to make one... Perhaps tere are other explanations than wanting some unfair adv. from it

Now im definitely out of the chat, I promise

[Oook]

Faello: A key part of my argument that aliases don't mess up elo was, surprisingly, that players don't use them in a irresponsible way. I think I made that clearer the first time I wrote out that argument - that's why it helps to explain at the time what you disagree with If you're claiming that the current top two players were deliberately cheating, I'd suggest you don't know either of them very well, and you're opening up a whole other argument there...

Are you seriously suggesting that either Dauntless or Nani used their second account other than how they've claimed? Bear in mind that nani came forward voluntarily, and no other player had noticed anything odd about the behaviour of the accounts. Besides, as Dauntless said, there are much simpler ways to cheat if you really wanted to. Lastly, the secondary accounts in no way added to the rating of the main account. Leo got to 2400 points by good play, not any tricks.

No. It's only one of the multiple ways how second account can be used and second account rating is rarely stable. Prolly there isn't a single account around used like that and I think that everybody would highly doubt that every player that has a second account is interested in "consistently plaing this account on 1700, 1800 or 1900 skill level".

Well, looking at the rank graph for Demo, it looks reasonably stable since it finished shooting up. So how is that not an example of such an account? If the rating shows that it is settled at that level, the player is playing it consistently at that level - that's exactly how elo works. Note I'm not saying they're choosing to play at a given level - they're playing in a consistent set of circumstances, and elo is then measuring the strength they play at in those circumstances. For the record, I'm not currently discussing whether it's preferable as a point of principle for all a players games to be under one name, merely looking at the practical results. Remember, you're trying to disprove my claim that use of aliases does disrupt elo (unless they deliberately use them for unfair advantage).

Happened where? This matter isn't connected with nani only, I don't understand why you want to narrow whole discussion to nani. What's the purpose of it? There's more second-accounts on the ladder, yet until know only a few persons admitted to having them. What about the rest? They're similar in their use of the second accounts to nani?

This discussion is about responsible use of second accounts - using them in circumstances that differ from those normally played in, but that are self consistent. I believe that this is how top players have used their aliases, and it is this type of use I feel is acceptable. I support Scatha's proposed rule changes to clarify this approach to aliases. So ignore misuse of second accounts - I'm not including that in my arguments. I simply want to establish whether you accept that responsible use of aliases does not mess with elo.

He can toy with his strenght level on his "official account". i've already described above how to do it. Advanced excuses are still just excuses.

Again, I'm not debating that point right now. My claim was purely about the effect on elo, not general philosophy of ladder conduct.

That's a pro-1 account sentence too.

I don't get you point there. Do you not agree that you deserve more points for beating someone at full strength, than you do for beating them when they are distracted? You've achieved a more difficult task, so earned greater recognition for it. If I beat Dauntless when he's blind drunk, no one would think that meant I'd played especially well

No it's not. If you enter the game voluntairly with a headache and lose it, it's still YOU that lost this game and you've entered it on your own responsibility. That's the problem here. Some of you treat it like "wtf? Nah, I won't risk my top notch account, I'm just going to play with this one", while others treat it as it probably should be treated - you're not going back to the shop saying that you'd not buy a chocolate if you'd be in your top notch mental form today and ask to get your money back, because nobody would treat you seriously.

Again, you missed my point. It's not about whether it's fair for one person to have two accounts, it's about whether their opponents get a fair risk / reward ratio. As long as the ratings for both accounts are fairly consistent, then by definition of the elo system, they do. A better analogy would be - a biscuit factory sorts it's biscuits into good and poor quality ones. A packet of good ones is better, so it costs more. A packet of poor ones costs less. That seems fair to me. Better than paying the same price for a packet, with 50% chance of good, 50% chance of poor. That's the comparison here.

Sarcastic Faello or Not So Nice Anymore Faello is unfortunately still a Faello. Do you agree with me?

If you told me you were in a bad mood, I would expect you to be more sarcastic than if you were in a good mood, even though you're still the same person. Likewise, I can expect different levels of play from someone when they are distracted, compared to when they focus on the game. And again, please respond to the point that if elo measures a consistent difference, then that difference is real, measurable, and can thus be used to give improved rating information.

As for your remaining points, they are irrelevant to the issue we are looking at right now. They are to do with one's philosophy of how the ladder should be played, and to what end. That is an interesting discussion as well, but I'm currently countering your claim that my maths is poor because I argued that responsibly used aliases do not cause problems with elo. Please either argue that point, or retract your claim.

(edited to fix quote tags)

[WhiteMage]

Thank you Faello and Insinuator for giving point by point response to OOK’s so called analysis. OOK’s analysis is nothing but a collection of examples, assumptions, and narrowing down the wide range of situations to self preferred scenarios. (such as “account with a fairly consistent rating”, “assuming that's a yes”, “let's look at the situation”, “significantly different, stable ratings”, “I think we can agree that was not what happened here.”, “We'll assume that the player does not deliberately misuse the weaker account “, “assuming the ratings are fairly stable “, “when he's distracted” So we have to take Nani’s word for being distracted?)
OOK, you gave quite some Elo points to Leocrotta, now please prove that you are not Nani!
Shall I just trust you on that. Or you defeated Leocrotta and that is a proof! Oh well…

OOK and others claiming Nani played at 2 different skill levels: have you taken any middle school or higher level math or stat courses? I hope that the answer is yes. So how did you all miss this?
Demogorgon played 199 games and is at 2257 Elo points now.
When Leocrotta played 199 games then he was only at the mere 2200 Elo points level.
This would suggest that Leocrotta is the multitasking account and Demogorgon is the serious account.

Besides, using Lecocrotta and Demogorgon as example is a gross oversimplification of the problem here.
OOK, let me assure you that I read all posts, all the way from SalsaRocoto. There is no merit in the arguments for using multiple accounts. The problems with it, however, are just too many, which were stated repeatedly by multiple accounts. The merits were also posited by multiple accounts, such as OOK, but you are flooding. You state things over and over again over multiple pages and you use sarcasm. How many more accounts did you use here in the post section to shove down your excuses on our throat?

Instead of wasting my time on retyping the same things that were already stated, I PLEA for the admins to please email me if you are willing to implement a stronger, more enforced ladder system and willing to share the existing code and documents with me. I am interested in contributing any way I can. I am not interested in playing this corrupt ladder any more, but no need to take off my account. Let’s just expire it to passive. I believe that the current ladder is not fixable due to the undetectable and unknown number of dupe and other cheat games.

[Velensk]

Point 1)
So, if we have an account with a fairly consistent rating of 2250, then that tells us that when that account is used, the player consistently plays at a strength of 2250. If they did not, then the elo would change to reflect this.

If another account has a fairly consistent rating of 2400, likewise, it tells us that when play against this account, you'll be playing against a strength of ~2400.

If you knew nothing about the identities of the players, would you agree that this is what you'd get from these ratings?

If an account is staying constant at any number that means that the ratio of points he's earning by winning is approximately the same as the number of points he's losing through losing. To be honest I don't really believe that number inherently represents anything meaningful. At a time I was ranked 9th on the ladder and the person in first had about 2000 points (I was around 1875 I think). I don't think I was ever the 9th best Wesnoth player in the world (and probably not even the 9th best on ladder at the time). I wasn't picky about my opponents, I played a ton of games against players substantially less skilled than me, my score went up I went about 50/50 win/loss vs opponents with actual skill even some that were ranked slightly below me and yet I still got ahead of them in points over time.

I do however, think that it becomes even less meaningful if you do not always get the same amount of credit or loss for beating or losing to the same player. What you are really saying here is that I'm to assume that there is a significant difference in the skill when the player is playing casually on one account and seriously on the other and so beating him when he's playing less well should count less than beating him when he is playing well. I do not think that him playing casually is any excuse to make then win count less even if it is in a very real sense, easier. The only guarantee that it is indeed easier is that he is choosing to play on that account rather than the one which he is supposed to regard as being important but enforcing any sort of honesty in this would be even harder than enforcing the one account per person rule (which as has been previously mentioned would be hard enough).

If I pretend I trust the ELO system for a game as chaotic as Wesnoth for a moment we can then ask will balance this out over time as if they are truly playing harder on their lesser account they'll earn wins and move up. Even if you work this with the best of intentions, consider that bouts of feeling 'non-competitive' are not at all consistent. There's the simple 'I don't want any pressure at the moment' variety, the 'I'm dead tired and not really thinking well variety' the 'I'm dead drunk and shouldn't be playing variety(though I shouldn't have been drinking would probably be even better)' and plenty others I'm sure. Same for their competitive modes of play though hopefully to a less severe extreme. I could play an account that is a 'casual alt' that belongs to an expert player but which he normally uses when he doesn't want the pressure and which should by all rights be tagging up near his normal one in ELO (or maybe even higher, stress can make one rash) but since he also uses it for playing two games at once, he also uses it for when he's drunk, and he also uses it for stress relief, (and lets say that the last two are chronic problems) then no, he's not going to be consistently playing at the same level and if I catch him on a 'lets just take it easy day' it's going to be substantially harder than the rating would indicate just as a day where he's playing two games at once would be easier even if between the two the rating hovers around a set point. Should he have to have a separate account for each of those and who and how is that going to be enforced?

Simpler, more strait-forward, and just as inaccurate IMO to have a single account which represents the average of the range of 'mind-sets' they are willing to be in while competing.

Point 2)
Assuming that's a yes,

Start again.

I don't have any problem with changing ladder rules for individual games as long as both players agree as the game is an isolated incident and both players know what they're changing before they commit to rolling the dice for the results (which are the thing the ladder cares about). However, changing the rules for the entire ladder would require a whole lot more people agreeing to buy into the new game and there is obviously some protest.

For what it's worth I think that the best solution to the current problem is to just compress the alternate accounts into one and let them keep playing.

[Kolbur]

I ask everyone to please tone down the aggression. Resorting to personal attacks doesn't help at all here...


Regarding the argument about whether multiple accounts screw around with the elo of other players or not:
In the end it all comes down to how comfortable you are with relying on other players to restrain themselves to strict circumstances in which they use their different accounts. I agree that there is barely any effect on elo if you work under the assumption that multi-account users only use their alter egos in a restrictive way. If you drop that assumption (that's not unreasonable) there are indeed effects on the elo. I think everyone can easily agree on this so far. Keep in mind that the restriction with which multiple accounts are used are completely arbitrary and only under the control of the user.

Now this discussion is not only about nani or Dauntless or whoever has multiple active aliases too but about the rules that apply to everyone. I for one don't feel very comfortable if we would simply drop the one-account-rule and everyone could have as many accounts as he wants for whatever reasons. I even think that this would encourage all ladder players to use multiple accounts since we have very successful role models now. Would you really want that everyone has 2, 3, 4 or even more active accounts? What are reasonable rules under which you can use these multiple accounts and what aren't? The one-account-rule is a very simple one. Fairplay on the other hand is a very vague idea and could be a matter of a lot of discussions (like this one now).

You could say that we already rely on fairplay and that the current rules are already being broken and it would be true. But having straightforward rules is still important even if they aren't brutally enforced. The rules are the base on which our community rests. They provide a frame of reference for the behaviour especially for new members. That's why they have to be simple and clear cut. They also represent a common consensus of the community. Apparently this consensus is very thin now and that's kinda sad to me. If we dropped the one-account-rule we would have to make sure that the new rules will still be simple and clear cut. I can't see how this is possible and the few suggested rule changes in this thread were very vague in my opinion.

PS: Seems like Velensk basically just wrote the same.

[Gallifax]

@Dauntless: I ragequit? I never quit, I allways say gg, I might suicide units or leader to speed up things , because I dont like to surrender:) But thats it.


On topic: Well I dont need a 2nd account, Just look how many games I played since I returned to ladder and how many I lost because of being rusty , because I forgot how to play well.

Yeah I might "ragequit" sometimes , but I do take those losses as Gallifax and not as anyone else!

I think multiaccounts should be forbidden, delete one allow leo for example.

Ofc leo is right, it will allways be an issue, I am getting more and more used to the fact that most people are cowards, humanity is like that(Just in general not concernign leo)

[nelson]

Why is everyone asking Rigor to delete their ladder accounts, threatening to leave Wesnoth, etc.? This all seems somewhat overdramatic.

There really must be some way we can keep the ladder community healthy and unified, to ensure that everyone behaves ethically and fairly while having a good time, to ensure that everyone feels their ranking and ELO are fair while keeping top players playing games that benefit the community.

I'm pretty sure that any solution requires that we stay cool and avoid flipping out. Let us keep talking and playing together, and assume the best intentions from everyone involved in this discussion, and remember that we all love Wesnoth.

[Doc Paterson]

Hey guys- Stop ruining Rigor's vacation. I sure hope he isn't taking time away from being fanned by island girls to read this mess.

(No seriously, I do think he's away, and people are acting like he's reading all of this stuff as it is posted...)

[Oook]

WhiteMage: Firstly, please stop with the groundless accusations that I have multiple ladder / forum accounts. I have stated that is not the case, and given that quite a few people have already admitted to aliases, I would have little reason not to tell you if I did. Though I'm amused you suggest I might actually be nani All I'm doing is explaining why the multiple accounts, as used by the top players, did not adversely affect the rating system. I'm not going to try and convince you on the issue of the 'purpose' etc of ratings on the ladder, we're not going to reach an agreement there. But on the factual issue of how aliases used responsibly affect the elo system, I believe I am demonstrably right.

I have never claimed it was not possibly to abuse multiple accounts, or that if they were abused that would not affect the elo. You say I make too many assumptions - I have clearly stated these from the start, and stick by them. I am arguing that unless someone deliberately loses games with one account and then targets stronger players, or transfers points from one account to another, then the elo system will remain as valid as it did previously. I have yet to see anyone make a convincing argument against this point, and the fact that you refuse to identify even the specific points where you disagree indicates to me that you're not serious about discussing this issue, and would prefer to just make blanket assertions. Sorry if you think I keep repeating myself - I'll stop after this, but I'll give you one last chance to actually read and respond to my specific claims, not just in vague, general terms.

And for the record, overall I have gained 25 more points from Leo than I lost. If you're going to try and smear me, at least find some accurate facts to start off from.

OOK and others claiming Nani played at 2 different skill levels: have you taken any middle school or higher level math or stat courses? I hope that the answer is yes. So how did you all miss this?
Demogorgon played 199 games and is at 2257 Elo points now.
When Leocrotta played 199 games then he was only at the mere 2200 Elo points level.
This would suggest that Leocrotta is the multitasking account and Demogorgon is the serious account.

Well, my degree was in maths, so I fell able to answer this one... I did not 'miss' that. When you use stats in an argument, it's not enough to simply quote a couple of numbers and then jump to your conclusion. You are expected to explain why your numbers are relevant, and the steps that lead from them to your conclusion. I will explain why the numbers quoted do not show what you suggest.

From those numbers, all we can say is that the Demo account gained more points per game tin the first 200 that the Leo account. However, this isn't an especially useful observation. Look at the rating graph, and you'll see that the Demo account shot up in rating very quickly at the start, then leveled off, and is relatively constant around 2250 now. In contrast, the Leo account gained points more slowly to start with, but kept rising for longer, before leveling out at about 2400.

The more rapid initial rise of the Demo account can be explained by two main factors - firstly, nani targeted strong players in the first 10 games (when wins are worth more), to try and bring the account up to speed quickly. Secondly, nani's base strength was stronger when he stated the Demo account, as he already had considerable ladder experience by then. Distracted nani at this point was still stronger than undistracted nani when the Leo account was created.

But the key point is to look at the overall behaviour of both graphs - by now, they have both mostly leveled off, allowing us to see that the Leo account leveled off to a higher level. An analogy would be two cars - the first takes accelerates to 50 mph in 10 seconds, then keeps accelerating to reach 70 mph after 20 seconds, and keeps going at 70. The second gets up to 60 mph after 8 seconds, but then stops accelerating, staying at 60. What you did was like looking at the cars after 10 seconds, and saying that the second car was the faster. True, it accelerated more rapidly, but if you look at the full data set, you see the first car is clearly the faster in the long run.

That is how I expect an argument involving stats to be presented - explaining how the numbers lead to the conclusion. Equally, I expect criticism of such an argument to be on that level also. If you can't do that, then there's little point us continuing this discussion.

Velensk: I agree with you that the current elo implementation is not a perfect system (I feel trueskill is a better alternative). However, either we completely ignore what the elo tells us (in which case it doesn't matter how aliases affect elo), or else we accept the basic premise of elo - that it gives us a useful indication of a players chance to win future games based solely on past performance. When you say that you don't think easier wins should be worth less that harder ones, if you actually mean that, you're rejecting the whole basis of elo. If you can't accept / see why two stable accounts with significantly different ratings do represent a real (consistent) difference in level of play between them, then there's no point continuing this discussion. I'm not passing any judgement on how the matches should be grouped, ideally, simply there effect on the elo system. And I'm afraid you either misunderstand it, or reject it, and in either case you're not going to get useful answers by considering it.

As a general note, I think I've made all the points I need to here. If anyone wants further clarification / disagrees with anything, I'll respond, as long as you make clear precisely which parts you're looking at. If you object to my assumptions, tough, that's a matter of belief really.

[Insinuator]

@Oook: I am sorry that I assumed you had multiple accounts. That was my mistake. However, I will not reiterate arguments that have already been made just because you have a problem with me. A wall of empty text does not impress me or anybody else.

It is precisely because of the trust issue that I'd like to see the rule changed. If arguably-justifiable things (like second accounts) are permissible, I think there will be lower chance -- and lower perceptions of the chance -- of people deciding that the rules are silly and disregarding other more important rules.

I agree with you in principle. I see nothing wrong with the rule now, but the concept of any competitive game is that it is governed by rules. Virtually every game has rules and those who break them are punished. For instance, is it fair that a person playing basketball elbows another in the face to get a shot off? No, that is called a foul. Does it make it ok because nobody sees him doing it? Again, NO. If someone finds a reasonable reason to change the rule, fine. I don't really care if people, like Oook, think the rule is right or not. That's their opinion and they're welcome to it. But ignoring it because it is inconvenient when other people are trying to abide by it is exploitation, pure and simple.

I do believe that most of the people who it is emerging having multiple accounts have them for reasonable reasons, and are unlikely to cheat in ways you suggest, but I'd like to move the two things further apart to make the community more friendly, as obviously some people (like yourself) find the current state of rule-breaking problematic.

I see no reason to believe that. They have set a poor precedent and done so secretly for years. Why would I give them the benefit of the doubt when they've already taken advantage of it?

I would like to know if you find the things which it was pointed out earlier are technically against the rules, such as random map pickers or no-mirror eras, a problem! I'd hazard a guess that the difference for you is that they are public rather than hidden breaches?

I see nothing in the rules against Random Map Pickers. But yes, hiding their second/third/fourth/etc. accounts is probably the more obscene breach here. I, for instance, don't play with timers even though that is specifically in the rules. But I do that openly and make no effort to hide it. If Players openly labeled their accounts something like Leocrotta2 or something, I really wouldn't have much of a problem with it, I'd just avoid them. But because they name them something totally different it is obvious that they knew they were doing something wrong and so made an effort to hide it.

[Yubtzock]

This is some serious amount of posts.
I can sum up some of this by two statements:
1. There should be no "multiple accounts" at all. even now.

2. There should be possibility to add and manage aliases within one account.

The second point could also support possibility to show separate, as well as one (unified, summary) statistics of all aliases. With the unified one being taken as the ranking in the ladder and the other ones kept for reference.
To ease the transmission from multi acc. people with multiple accounts could merge them, on the condition that there was not a game between the merged nicknames.

The marking of possible abusers could be more apparent then just "red colour" - what about an option to ignore invites by them at all? Or actual deletion of confirmed cheating with these?


On the side note: playing ladder games on development version is completely different. Much less players, skill diverging from sky-high to new-to-wesnoth-how-do-I-kill-ghosts. Add to this multiple accounts and try to find an opponent/game and get reasonable rating.

[Doc Paterson]

(to Oook): I will not reiterate arguments that have already been made just because you have a problem with me. A wall of empty text does not impress me or anybody else.

Wow, that is a pretty inflammatory comment there. Oook has presented several well thought out and mathematically sound arguments, to which you haven't actually responded (and saying you did doesn't make it so). Now chill out, or hit the road.

[WhiteMage]

Oook,
Leo losing 7 points on you and you gaining 25 on Leo is not a proof that you are not the same (looks like a good deal to me if you are both). Maybe you are Dauntless or Cremember, or maybe all the 4. Or if you are not, then maybe someone else has 100 accounts. I don’t see how you can prove that it is not the case. My arguments are not specific to you, only as a problem that must be solved or at least improved. As it was stated by Doc P: “The real surprise will be when it's revealed that there are only four people on the ladder, each with roughly 1,000 aliases. ”.

It will be surprise to many, but not to me. I think that this statement is not very far from the truth.

Btw, admins claim that Elo is being used, but not willing to share their modified version of the Elo system that is actually being used. This is very suspicious. I do not want to bash the admins as I have nothing against them, but wouldn’t the knowledge how their “modified version of the Elo” actually works give a tremendous advantage to those players who happen to know it? Maybe Leo knew the formula and was able to capitalize by multiple accounts and the very high number of games being played. To me to play so many games would take a decade or more. This of course, does not mean that Leo is not the best player around and I do not specifically accuse him of anything other than having multiple accounts, which was specifically forbidden. Just another possible way to improve the ladder.

[Insinuator]

Oook has presented several well thought out and mathematically sound arguments, to which you haven't actually responded (and saying you did doesn't make it so). Now chill out, or hit the road.

I never said I responded to his arguments and I see no need to do so because other people already have! Tell me what is wrong with this?

[nebula955]

I dislike making personal attacks, but WhiteMage, you're an idiot. Apart from making your Gestapo suggestions and basically ignoring every post already made, you claim that the whole system being 4 people is not far from the truth and that Oook could be nani? Just quit the ladder, no one will miss you.

Insinuator: There can be reasons other than gaining an unfair advantage to making an alias. Think about it. Or actually read the previous posts for why it is done. Also, comparing it to basketball fouls is incompatible as that clearly hurts the other players, while nani playing as demo doesn't exactly decrease your chance of winning nor reduce your chances of gaining points on this damn ladder.