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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 7:52 am 
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I think its sorted now.

Michael Rosen
13:22
i agree that this was allowed by game mechanics


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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 7:54 am 
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Indeed. If its allowed its valid. Simple.

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:59 am 
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Yep. I am talking to michael as I type this.


The conversation was posted to me in my chat this morning. You conveniently left out the part that 3 of these colony gates were sprung up out of nowhere and were being used in sequence from one, two, three, AND that the first of these 3 had already been booted and conquered by your alliance AFTER it served it's purpose TO your alliance, thereby making it a slave and arguably a farm.

I acted the next tick before the second colony could follow suit. This was a clear case of using slave accounts to accomplish an ultimate goal. The action of booting and conquering the first of the 3 established your intentions in this whole thing and ensured to me that I was right in my suspicions, and had I not acted sooner, more damage would have been done by this means of exploitation.

You really should not bring things to Michael like this, not give him all of the facts and then copy and paste one line of his response without letting everyone else know that you omitted pertinent facts as well.

This call was right and advocated fair play. I am sorry that you chose to use such a "tactic" and call it game mechanics and say that you used something the game allowed you to do. Technically 'the game allows you to create farms too', but you know full well what will happen if you do.

In case you are wondering which parts of this are covered by the terms and conditions, please see the sections on farming and the sections on exploitation as well. We reserve the right also through the terms of service, to make judgement calls when things are not as clearly defined as farming for resources.

In this case I deem it fit to take action because

  • Intention was established when the first of the 3 slaves was booted and conquered after having served its purpose. This clearly established your intention with these 3, and moved to strike your credibility. The ONLY thing there is to counter the notion that the other two would have ended the same way, is your say so. Your say so relies on credibility.
  • The very land mass in the ultimate consideration of the deal was determined by an admin to be just as valuable as any resource that could be conveyed by means of a farm, therefore being of equal or greater value than resources, deserved equal or greater reaction from administration.
  • This is not the first time, nor will it be the last time that administration discourages use of slave colonies as (but not limited to) conquers (farms), spam attack colonies, or for temporary use radar colonies

I am sorry that you folks in the NO alliance do not appreciate my reasoning for this. Im not sure if I am more sorry for myself, or for you guys though, because this was clearly wrong and you guys know it!

I do NOT think you are slow or stupid people by any means, and knew full well that what you were doing was totally wrong morally, even if you were somehow able to reason with yourselves that this was somehow "game mechanics" and thereby should be allowed. You should have known better, and if ever you wanted to know what I would think of this tactic, you have just as direct a line to me as anyone else does to ask me what I would have thought of such a tactic, to which I would have echoed again and again a clear and absolving
NO!! NO!!! NO!!!

This call was right.

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:17 am 
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Hey guys.

Only now catching up on this issue.

As BD Founder i see the following long term of strategy as follows:

Players will always find innovative ways to gain the upper hand in Battle Dawn, that what makes it such an interesting game.
However, some of those ways are unbalanced to my taste.
As a game designer of BD I'm obliged to limit the 'dirty tactics' while not limiting 'smart tactics'.

How do you judge smart from dirty? simply by seeing how much fun vs. frustration that tactic generates in total on both sides.

so my purpose is to make the game fun for all, even for the losing side.

That will always be the nature of battle dawn, game mechanics will change, balance, tweak always to make the game live, changing, and interesting.

The admin's job is to identify these issues, and pin point to the development team the current problems and identify the possible changes requires to fix the problem.

we'll address this new 'tactic' as well, by modifying the game rules to make it obsolete as i see it as more frustrating than fun feature as a whole.

The last month the dev team was inactive due to traveling & apartment changes. but we will release an update in September for sure once we're all settled back in.

So, stay tuned, and Enjoy the best strategy game ever made :)
we will keep making it better.

p.s.
the admin's role is to keep everyone as happy as possible in the world. that's almost an impossible mission, as there's always someone hurt and holding a grudge, before attacking any admins for his actions, first put yourself in his shoes and see how do you think you could have done better for all sides.

There is only one blame for 'unfair tactics' and that's me, the game designer. and my job never ends :) i'll hunt all those down i guess as long as BD exists.

Cheers!

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:27 am 
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Thank you Michael :)

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:29 am 
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Seth,

How did the NO alliance GATE to brand new colonies?

Were those colonies IN their alliance? If so, how, exactly are they slave colonies? Kevin recruited me late this era seeing the NO threat from several of his friends. I came in around tick 450. Kevin kicked someone, gave me that person's conquer and crystals and accepted me in the alliance.

Did I partake in a slave colony exploit?

More, once I arrived, I tried to send oil to someone with a big army since I had boosts to burn and no army. But, the game precluded me from sending resources WITHIN MY OWN alliance until I'd been there for 100 ticks or something.

Stupid, honestly, but, the code worked.

In NOs case, do you have evidence they multi-played these new colonies? By adding these colonies into NO, as the chat you link suggests, if the makers don't want new alliance members gateable, stop them from being. But, once a new member is a member of your alliance, it ceases being a possible slave colony.

And obviously when you kick an alliance member and cannibalize him, it's not a slave colony either. When GIFT used a THOR silo to get out of Europe into Iceland and in to Greenland JUST two days ago, did the THOR silo owner become a slave colony to GIFT by agreeing with Kevin to let us take his silo so we could get in without our enemy putting us on camps?

Obviously not. Kevin worked an alliance with THOR and used that friendship to help our alliance. But, if you were inclined, you could, and your personality type is YOU WOULD, cite that as utilizing a slave colony to issue a ban. Because you like stretching rules to fit a case.

As Michael says to Ilona, your job is to help identify things you want the coders to fix.

If you don't want new alliance members to have active gates available to that alliance on Tick 1, code it, as you have resource sending. Or, hell, code in you can't send tokens for 100 ticks too, as that will have a similar effect and be easier as the code already exists and it's a one line change to have it include tokens too.

I assume these colonies existed for less than a day, right?

What you need to stop doing is believing something is not to your liking and discovering creative ways to apply a rule which does not fit. No one, anywhere, thinks an alliance member is a slave colony, though, honestly, playing with Kevin so long, I am, indeed a slave.

In a PM to you I even told you I was one of his lackeys. I do not play for myself.

I play for his alliances. By definition, I'm a slave colony.

You need to ban all alliances who share a goal together as they are not playing for themselves. I follow orders and I don't attack people who could help me because it benefits Kevin and the Gift alliance.

We are all slaves by your new slave rule.

Well done.

Michael,

Thanks for taking the time to post here. What you posted is reasonable, thoughtful and well communicated. These are not traits common to Seth's method of administration of E4 in my experience. Seth is not just helping identify possible exploits for coders to improve their code.

In fact, as you state here, YOU ARE JUST CATCHING UP on all this. I contacted you about it. Ilona did. Did Seth? If so, when? My guess is the last person to bring this "exploit" to your attention was the admin himself. As to keeping things fair, there's only one way.

You issue NO bans until you've taken the time to speak with someone. If you need to issue a ban, do so, and correct the damage done from it. Seth bans first, demands some level of tribute for even tolerating the time to hear your side of the story, and reluctantly, as a favor you should be grateful for, lets you back in.

This is with me. It's with many.

Seth needs to take the time to contact the people involved and ASK questions. Give him the power to stop a tick from turning if you're worried about actions until he can make contact with people. But, as I wrote above, he has essentially now made a slave of all alliances. And he's done so with his typical, "Be glad I'm not mean," flair.


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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:36 am 
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I take it you missed the first of 3 bulleted points there?

The first of the 3 was promptly booted and conquered by the same alliance. This established intention for the others.

Why do we ban for farming at all?

Michael has a hard time saying no to people.

The admin's job is also to police the game and ensure fair play.

The exploit was used by having these colonies come in out of nowhere, and wait until an opportune time to even reveal their alignment. By then. the gates were up and the units were coming in. After one of them was no longer of any use to the alliance, it was booted and conquered. I have very little reason to believe that the other two had intentions any differently than the first other than the people directly responsible telling me so, whom again, have issues with credibility and conflict of interest in this matter.

Care to address this Oluvai?


Also Oluvai, I would be very interested to know what you are talking about with the crystals and stuff. Please do contact me in game regarding this issue so I can look more into it.

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:49 am 
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Your call was completely wrong Seth.

Quote:
That is the conversation as it was posted to me in my chat this morning. You conveniently left out the part that 3 of these colony gates were sprung up out of nowhere and were being used in sequence from one, two, three, AND that the first of these 3 had already been booted and conquered by your alliance AFTER it served it's purpose TO your alliance, thereby making it a slave and arguably a farm.


As far as I see from the convo, Michael was in agreement with Ilona that it was allowed by game mechanics.

Now to farms. A farm is a colony solely built for the purposes of resources or spamming or laying outposts or whatever. In this case we did not have any advantage, other than get the player into our alliance and use him as a gate.
Like Michael has said, if this "tactic" is perceived as "abuse" and people dont want it, then please go ahead release an update removing it. We are not against it. However, this feature has remained in battledawn for quite sometime now. We thought of it, others did not. That does not make it abuse. The act of conquering a colony who was used as a gate was pure strategy and DOES NOT by any means amount to farming.

Farming is abuse. For the purposes of resources. We did not abuse by conquering one colony. We did that so we could use him as a gate in future since that was our only way out. Please note the differences between conquering for the purposes of resources and for the purposes of tactics.

Though you may be allowed to make judgement calls, you seem to over use them to a point where your decisions are completely abusive and in most cases bring the game to a halt and ONLY create ill will. And it is not just me saying that. You cannot simply ban someone, over technicalities. You knew full well that we conquered that colony so GIFT may not conquer him and get us stuck in Africa. You knew full well that it wasnt for the purposes of resources. Infact we suffered by losing 2 armies, resources earned per tick etc. Infact it seems as though, you were waiting for an excuse to ban someone. And what damage are you really talking about? Damage to gift? An alliance with around what 700 squads vs our 320? You feel that tipped the game in favor of us?

If at all after everything, you were still in disagreement, you should have done what Michael said. Reported that particular instance to the developers, probably made a forum topic about it explaining why it was wrong. And told NO not to use something like that going forward. You immediately jumped the gun and gladly banned 3 colonies, for an issue, that has never been addressed before.

We deem it not fit to be acted against because:

1. This has been in battledawn for quite sometime. WE do not know what is considered abusive in any situation by an admin or other players. We can only work with what we have - features available ingame. Neither is this tactic specifically mentioned in the ToS, so bending rules and misinterpreting them wont work.

2. You determined the landmass was of greater value than resources? And may I know for what reason you determined that? Did you determine that because GIFT had more income, more squads and more area, and we gated a mere 300 squads to Africa, while they had 700 waiting for us? The landmass in reality was not of any greater value. Gift could immediately relocate to Japan, and we wouldn't have been able to do anything about it, than be stuck in Africa with a paltry 300 squads. Your judgement here was totally wrong. Nor does this tip the balance in anyone's favor. The advantage was still with GIFT. Infact it tipped the game in THEIR favor, so we actually lost our advantage of holding our ground and protecting our colonies. In that it could even be considered bad tactics. Anyone with a deep understanding of how this game works, would have been able to see that.

3. The administration can discourage what they feel is unfair to others. As long as you guys get them implemented, and dont provide us with such an option ingame.

Obviously not only the NO alliance criticizes you for your reasoning, every other player does.

Lastly, please stop considering a game to consist of any moral values. We did not ruin the lives of players in GIFT, nor gain anything in RL, to attach moral values to this. We simply played the game with what we had and you cannot honestly expect players to come talk to you before doing anything. That is not an admins job, to tell players what to do, but moderate from a distance and take a reasonable action when he sees something that may be "dirty" - the reasonable action in this case would have been to tell NO, not to do such things again, and reported that instance to the dev team. Then you would have made the right call. And if we did it again, go ahead give us a ban.

In this case you simply jumped the gun and therefore you are wrong.

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:51 am 
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BTW Seth Michael was not entirely supporting you :roll:

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 Post subject: Re: Some Clown Locked The Topic
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:53 am 
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You too have completely ignored the fact that the first of these 3 colonies was promptly kicked and conquered by the alliance after serving its purpose, thereby establishing intention with the others as well.


What would you do if you had a colony not too far from your alliance, was conquered by your enemy and also sent spam squads at your alliance and nuked you when the enemy alliance that had it conquered, is also attacking you?

I assume you would report this to me, yeah? If I am not mistaken you HAVE reported this sort of thing to me in the past.

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