Toon sharing.

[Freakymagic]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

Problems updated:

1. No longer applicable.

2. Queue Dodging - weekly hour cap will help mitigate but not eradicate. End of season tourney would certainly help, but it could prevent some from participating properly due to scheduling issues. EDIT: the minimum queue time is also an interesting way to fight this. Nice suggestion Sisix.

3. Purposefully sharing to use the same IP to avoid facing friend's team. To prevent this we could make it so having the same IP no longer prevents matchmaking. Downside is that people queueing multiple teams at the same time, or even different people on the same IP/network, would risk the -25pts penalty. Feedback welcome to this proposed fix.

4. Dodging share detection to face friendly team on purpose. While avoiding -25pts is obviously nice, at the highest ratings you don't want to face friendly teams and trade fights 50/50 since you lose more than you gain. Thus, this is only beneficial when one team has excess rating to throw away to an undeserving team of a friend/sharer. This is not likely to have any real impact on topmost teams since the benefactor of this needs to be a not-so-great one. Furthermore, doing it would be risky for the better team, considering the loss would show on their record: obvious red flag: a team with excess rating is somehow losing to a team they would normally beat and is likely friendly with or strongly connected to. This can only be prevented by being reported. Was there actually anyone at the top that you think was doing this last season? If so, you need to report at the time.

2) agreed, i think sisix's idea is a good one

3) Personally not a big fan of it. Myself and others have multiple strong toons. Not to mention people who are queing weaker toons to get bonus and tokens for tempers. Would help those who have all the time in the world and can que each team separate , but for those with limited time, either your not queing or your running the risk of big rating loss's.

Like wise im not sure of a great way to deter it other then periodic checks to top teams?

4) More so like alga stated. Owners with army's letting others use their toons for rewards. For example legendaryghost. Is gt's toon. But was run by redeye all season long first with redeye/hk who then swapped for slashh, then red made greeneye/felixandru/legendaryghost near the end of the season and rushed to bottom of top 10. I dont know if gt ran the toon at all during the season, since its ended though gt has.

Thorins team. Majority of the season demontamer or krim was running the toon/s since the owners couldn't be active enough to maintain their rating/ranking.

[Glitchless]

Originally Posted by Freakymagic

2) agreed, i think sisix's idea is a good one

3) Personally not a big fan of it. Myself and others have multiple strong toons. Not to mention people who are queing weaker toons to get bonus and tokens for tempers. Would help those who have all the time in the world and can que each team separate , but for those with limited time, either your not queing or your running the risk of big rating loss's.

Like wise im not sure of a great way to deter it other then periodic checks to top teams?

4) More so like alga stated. Owners with army's letting others use their toons for rewards. For example legendaryghost. Is gt's toon. But was run by redeye all season long first with redeye/hk who then swapped for slashh, then red made greeneye/felixandru/legendaryghost near the end of the season and rushed to bottom of top 10. I dont know if gt ran the toon at all during the season, since its ended though gt has.

Thorins team. Majority of the season demontamer or krim was running the toon/s since the owners couldn't be active enough to maintain their rating/ranking.

3. I see your point, however, try to see it from a different perspective. If we asked an alien from outer space who had never played a multiplayer RPG before which was a greater exploit: a single person playing multiple characters at the same time or multiple people playing the same character at different times in shifts, what do you think his answer would be? Consider for a moment that it may be a bit hypocritical to even complain about the advantage had by multiple people playing the same character if you're unwilling to give up the very similar advantage you enjoy by playing multiples at once.

As for periodic checks, I'm assuming you mean that we look at them manually and attempt to determine if there are multiples playing the same character. The idea that we could even figure that out with every bit of info at our disposal is fiction. Any sharers with access to Google search engine technology will be able to very easily find a way to make it impossible to see if the character is being shared. All suggestions moving forward need to be ways to eliminate the advantages of sharing, not sharing itself, because it simply cannot be stopped.

4. Shared members between teams existed, that's not what was being asked. If we remember #3, it is actually preferable for the sake of everyone and the integrity of the rating system if those teams do face each other and have the better team win. Only in the case of a team with excess rating purposefully gifting it to the lesser team is there any real advantage gained. This is already against the rules, though. Did it happen? Was it reported?

[Glitchless]

Honestly, I think character sharing has been a pretty big red herring. It's been pointed to as some horrific exploit when in reality it's probably not having much of a significant impact notwithstanding the benefit it can give a team in an ability to dodge matches. If we look at your case in particular for last season, and we want to know who truly had the better team, Kainith/Frisky/Algamisu or Demontamer/Nibbles/Dawl the answer is "I don't know." The latter team dodged true conflict as much as possible, using the excuse that it was the most mathematically sound strategy. That is a far cry from the true spirit of the arena, where what is best is to crush your enemies and see them driven before you.

Perhaps all that is needed to address character sharing alone is the 84 hours per week limit to true activity (not logged in time of course) with a minimum activity time of 1 or 2 hours. And after that, in terms of correcting what makes the arena feel exploitable, our emphasis should be primarily on preventing the dodging problem in arena.

Another way to do that would be to force the best teams to face each other. We could only allow a certain percentage of their matchmaking to come from fights against teams far out of their league. Any top team who wanted to make use of the majority of their allotted queues would need to face other top teams.

[Soxson]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

Honestly, I think character sharing has been a pretty big red herring. It's been pointed to as some horrific exploit when in reality it's probably not having much of a significant impact notwithstanding the benefit it can give a team in an ability to dodge matches. If we look at your case in particular for last season, and we want to know who truly had the better team, Kainith/Frisky/Algamisu or Demontamer/Nibbles/Dawl the answer is "I don't know." The latter team dodged true conflict as much as possible, using the excuse that it was the most mathematically sound strategy. That is a far cry from the true spirit of the arena, where what is best is to crush your enemies and see them driven before you.

Perhaps all that is needed to address character sharing alone is the 84 hours per week limit to true activity (not logged in time of course) with a minimum activity time of 1 or 2 hours. And after that, in terms of correcting what makes the arena feel exploitable, our emphasis should be primarily on preventing the dodging problem in arena.

Another way to do that would be to force the best teams to face each other. We could only allow a certain percentage of their matchmaking to come from fights against teams far out of their league. Any top team who wanted to make use of the majority of their allotted queues would need to face other top teams.

It sounds good on paper but it'll likely cause more problems in practice. I think the less we change arena, the better. I still support no anonymous solo arena and PVE tempers though.

[Neela]

Character sharing is mostly exploitable during arena.. so im happy to see its in a discussion to fix the problem. Soxon has one good point that whatever changes might not work.. but i wouldnt mind a month trial where u glitch are allowed to change the rules whenever. we get the bonus and the tokens but the rules can get changed whenever AND noone can get bant.

Even tho it could become a problem for me and Kingzs i wouldnt mind atleast trying the suggestion of removing IP adresses cant meet eachother and see what happens.

Time limit suggestion wouldnt hurt me as long as its / toon so if u know toons are played more then 12h a day then go for it!

[Huggles]

I'm not seeing how we went from 'Avoiding certain teams in queue is a valid tactic' to 'We need to limit play time to reduce queue dodging'.

Look at the base problem which causes people to dodge, which I tried to point out numerous times in /c.

By the end of the season, we were beating Kainith's team with relative ease. They were getting around -3.5 or -4 rating from a loss to us. Since they were trying to catch us, that meant a net -8 rating loss for them. Every other team was giving them +1 rating, so they needed to fight 9 fights in between meeting us in order for them to net any rating. Obviously, they ended up just dropping queue when we were in because what's the point of queueing for no benefit?

Excellence's team was the only real threat to our team. If they managed to beat us 10% of the time, it would be a net rating loss to us. They would gain +15 and we would lose -14 or so. That's a 29 rating swing. If we beat them 9 times, we would get 9 rating, and we would lose 29 for the 10th fight which we lost. That's a -19 rating swing for beating a team 9/10 times. So why would we risk queueing?

The issue with people avoiding teams they don't want to face by secretly setting their email to theirs (Soxson used this to dodge us by setting his email to Dawl's) has been solved already.

If you want to avoid people dodging via toon sharing, you could do what someone said earlier and check for current IP and email and require both to be the same to avoid meeting in arena.

[Pale]

Again, I think the change you already made is enough. More restrictions at this point will just hurt the arena.

[Pale]

Originally Posted by Soxson

It sounds good on paper but it'll likely cause more problems in practice. I think the less we change arena, the better. I still support no anonymous solo arena.

As strange as this may seem, I find myself in full agreement with Soxson.

[Freakymagic]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

3. I see your point, however, try to see it from a different perspective. If we asked an alien from outer space who had never played a multiplayer RPG before which was a greater exploit: a single person playing multiple characters at the same time or multiple people playing the same character at different times in shifts, what do you think his answer would be? Consider for a moment that it may be a bit hypocritical to even complain about the advantage had by multiple people playing the same character if you're unwilling to give up the very similar advantage you enjoy by playing multiples at once.

4. Did it happen? Was it reported?

Sorry if i wasn't clear. Wasn't saying it shouldn't happen, just that me personally am not a fan of it. I enjoy pvp. I enjoy having different builds and trying different things. Waiting 3-5 months to change builds and have a true chance of compete for top arena just seems less enjoyable to me (obviously that's me not everyone). If this is what it takes to make arena as a hole better then by all means id be for trying it.

4) no i dont think any higher rating teams were purposefully losing to friendly teams. But friendly teams being run/owned by the same people were fighting each other.

IMO the limited active time + sisix's idea of being forced to que for x amount of time would both help. If some sort of weighted matchmaking to force high rating teams to more often fight each other as well would help solve the issue.

[Freakymagic]

Originally Posted by Huggles

I'm not seeing how we went from 'Avoiding certain teams in queue is a valid tactic' to 'We need to limit play time to reduce queue dodging'.

Look at the base problem which causes people to dodge, which I tried to point out numerous times in /c.

By the end of the season, we were beating Kainith's team with relative ease. They were getting around -3.5 or -4 rating from a loss to us. Since they were trying to catch us, that meant a net -8 rating loss for them. Every other team was giving them +1 rating, so they needed to fight 9 fights in between meeting us in order for them to net any rating. Obviously, they ended up just dropping queue when we were in because what's the point of queueing for no benefit?

Excellence's team was the only real threat to our team. If they managed to beat us 10% of the time, it would be a net rating loss to us. They would gain +15 and we would lose -14 or so. That's a 29 rating swing. If we beat them 9 times, we would get 9 rating, and we would lose 29 for the 10th fight which we lost. That's a -19 rating swing for beating a team 9/10 times. So why would we risk queueing?

If you want to avoid people dodging via toon sharing, you could do what someone said earlier and check for current IP and email and require both to be the same to avoid meeting in arena.

You refused to ever fight our teams if all of us were present. Due to your team having a lead we were forced to que at sub strength (1 person running all 3 toons) for a chance to fight and catch you. In those match's you barely beat both teams. Yes you had easier time against kainith/agamisu/frisky it was by no means a win for you.

Near the end of the season (leading up to and during rush) we gave up caring/trying after all the bs, so yes you beat kain/frisky/algamisu as we qued for bonus and tokens without pots. Freaky/excellence/tsutsu you guys refused to ever fight unless you knew it was only 1 person while barely managing to win. freaky/tsu team beat you guys 2 days after we rerolled mid season. Im not saying we would win every match but the fact that those 2 teams accounted for 90%+ of your loss's while you refused to ever fight us at even footing (or just refusing to fight at all) shows it.

In the future yes, its our own fault, we shouldn't have rerolled mid season. We should have qued at full strength all season. Those dont change the fact arena should be about the strongest team winning, not the fairly strong team dodging the competition to win.

[Raidens]

Originally Posted by Freakymagic

You refused to ever fight our teams if all of us were present. Due to your team having a lead we were forced to que at sub strength (1 person running all 3 toons) for a chance to fight and catch you. In those match's you barely beat both teams. Yes you had easier time against kainith/agamisu/frisky it was by no means a win for you.

Near the end of the season (leading up to and during rush) we gave up caring/trying after all the bs, so yes you beat kain/frisky/algamisu as we qued for bonus and tokens without pots. Freaky/excellence/tsutsu you guys refused to ever fight unless you knew it was only 1 person while barely managing to win. freaky/tsu team beat you guys 2 days after we rerolled mid season. Im not saying we would win every match but the fact that those 2 teams accounted for 90%+ of your loss's while you refused to ever fight us at even footing (or just refusing to fight at all) shows it.

In the future yes, its our own fault, we shouldn't have rerolled mid season. We should have qued at full strength all season. Those dont change the fact arena should be about the strongest team winning, not the fairly strong team dodging the competition to win.

You guys still salty over this same bs. give it a rest already. next time Que all season if you wanna win so we don't have to hear lame excuses as to why you didn't win

[Freakymagic]

Originally Posted by Raidens

You guys still salty over this same bs. give it a rest already. next time Que all season if you wanna win so we don't have to hear lame excuses as to why you didn't win

I dont give 2 ****s if i win or lose. I do care if arena is **** or if its enjoyable, and sadly it has been ****. Nice try though.

[Huggles]

Fights with Kain weren't close, even when you were potted. Even before rush we were actively looking for Kain's team in queue to fight them, and you guys would usually drop queue.

[Brau]

Toon sharing is killing your business, toons are passed through generations of nodders but this is not the biggest problem.
Running OP toons 24/7 by groups of individuals is inflating nod economy even if they burn 5$ each hour.
If companions would not have been such a big gold kitchensink, TC and resource prices would have skyrocketed in price by now (before companions, some LG items that costed around 22 mil in 2018 were estimated to cost over 35 mils in 2019 before companion patch).
Abusive sharing (whoring) must be stopped, password sharing should be banable.
Unfortunately, if password sharing would be banable a lot of utility toons / helping friends won't be possible, examples where sharing toons is not harmful:
1) CB alts
2) PL alts
3) Masters holders
4) Questing services
5) Crafting services
6) Periods of inactivity: vacation or IRL taunts
7) Helping friends on Pilg (cause not everyone bots their way up to 90)
8) Doing arena

In order to enstablish control / create visibility on sharing / sitting, please implement the following sitting mechanism:
1) Commands to manage sitters: /make_sitter SitterName ~~~ reason ~~~, /list_sitters, /remove_sitter SitterName (this will enable you to see at any moment in time who's who without the need to hunt cheaters)
2) A sitter will use his password in order to login a toon that he sits on
3) Display the sitter name next to the toon name that someone sits on, ToonName (SitterName)
4) Blacklist actions like: trading of high valuable items, nomming tcs ...
5) Make trophies soul bound when sitting a toon
6) Ensure upon login / creation of a character that sharing password is banable by ticking a checkbox of some kind
7) Temporary ban for breaking the password sharing rule first time, perma-ban on second attempt

It's time to define clear borders where sharing is allowed.
Please allow a 2 week interval as a transition period.

[Glitchless]

Originally Posted by Huggles

I'm not seeing how we went from 'Avoiding certain teams in queue is a valid tactic' to 'We need to limit play time to reduce queue dodging'.

The quote from the FAQ is "Queue dodging is an unavoidable part of arena." It is like character sharing, unavoidable, yet we are always pursuing a way to minimize the impact it has on the game.

Originally Posted by Huggles

By the end of the season, we were beating Kainith's team with relative ease. They were getting around -3.5 or -4 rating from a loss to us. Since they were trying to catch us, that meant a net -8 rating loss for them. Every other team was giving them +1 rating, so they needed to fight 9 fights in between meeting us in order for them to net any rating. Obviously, they ended up just dropping queue when we were in because what's the point of queueing for no benefit?

To prove you were better and to not have your detractors be able to say otherwise.

The 90% win net loss statistic was based on a giant gap in rating (which was their fault) but you only needed to beat them >50% of the time to remain higher rated than them.


At the bare minimum, we'd like to test both the 84h weekly active limit and one or more of the following methods to limit dodging for the next premade season:

-Minimum queue time, ie remain in queue for at least 1 hour after entering for the first time. Downside: potentially exploitable as a way to explain purposefully thrown fights.

-Matchmaking quotas, ie of the 40 fights per day, half are reserved for teams that are within 10 places from your team, with no more than 2 fights per team being used to fill this quota. Downside: slower queues for top teams.

-Stronger maximum rating gaps. No more matching vs. teams far from your rating for slow, safe ratings gains. Downside: slower queues for top teams.

-Rating realignment prior to rush. Similar to racing where there are qualifiers to determine your starting position. Ratings would be decreased at the start of rush week so that no team was more than 200 pts beyond the closest team behind them.

[Blaze]

cba to read this super long thread.

from what i browsed. anyone care to list these toons that are being farmed 24/7 burning tcs? you got people like tsu freaky and alga...farming their own toons. trojan is gone so his toon army isn't doing it. norman perhaps? he isn't taking shifts to burn tcs.

pls name any toons that are cycled constantly each week to continuously burn tcs. it's not that hard to be tc profitable~ who needs to take a shift on a toon.



now arena dodging.


glitch, limiting queue times to 12 hours a day of actively queueing... won't help much. how many top teams exactly last season exceeded this? .-. keep in mind key word is active. also isn't this what match limits was implemented for to begin with? shouldn't it be an issue if you don't use all your matches within this match period? but if you do use them all within the period then is the time limit doing anything?
if you wanna make it so people can't log 2 toons on the same ip to dodge it's pretty simple.

registered emails. "if two teams do not have the same email registered between the 6 toons they will lose 10 rating per hour they are simultaneously queued while having a shared ip" if they change back to having the same email along with the same ip. that's a bit harder because people log on work pcs and crap. perhaps someone else has a better idea for that.


people talk about the problems of sharing.

"they burn tcs and inflate the market" "people leave but toons stay" "they queue 24/7" "they dodge in arena".


let's give an estimate that 1/3rd of the toons in nod are being sat. (if you're in top clans it's not really that far off lulz).

if we fixed toon sharing. less tcs would be used. less would be burnt (prolly...again...most don't need to sit a toon to be tc profitable)

there would also be a lot less resources in auction house~ so those would go up.
queue would slow down but honestly who is queueing in excess of 12 hours a day that is a real team? teams like norman's were inactive 90% of season. they queued a few hours a day or less.

dodging in arena is only real issue i see.

[Blaze]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

-Minimum queue time, ie remain in queue for at least 1 hour after entering for the first time. Downside: potentially exploitable as a way to explain purposefully thrown fights

so people who have limited time to play nod (like those who play on library pcs for around an hour a day. they do exist) cannot queue because they may be unable to fulfill the 1 hour minimum quota?

-Matchmaking quotas, ie of the 40 fights per day, half are reserved for teams that are within 10 places from your team, with no more than 2 fights per team being used to fill this quota. Downside: slower queues for top teams.

for some timezones (like australians) this seems quite a disadvantage. i don't know how many top 10 teams queued midnight-6 am server time last season.

-Stronger maximum rating gaps. No more matching vs. teams far from your rating for slow, safe ratings gains. Downside: slower queues for top teams.

support

-Rating realignment prior to rush. Similar to racing where there are qualifiers to determine your starting position. Ratings would be decreased at the start of rush week so that no team was more than 200 pts beyond the closest team behind them.

support.

[Roeth]

Originally Posted by Brau

Toon sharing is killing your business, toons are passed through generations of nodders but this is not the biggest problem.
Running OP toons 24/7 by groups of individuals is inflating nod economy even if they burn 5$ each hour.
If companions would not have been such a big gold kitchensink, TC and resource prices would have skyrocketed in price by now (before companions, some LG items that costed around 22 mil in 2018 were estimated to cost over 35 mils in 2019 before companion patch).
Abusive sharing (whoring) must be stopped, password sharing should be banable.
Unfortunately, if password sharing would be banable a lot of utility toons / helping friends won't be possible, examples where sharing toons is not harmful:
1) CB alts
2) PL alts
3) Masters holders
4) Questing services
5) Crafting services
6) Periods of inactivity: vacation or IRL taunts
7) Helping friends on Pilg (cause not everyone bots their way up to 90)
8) Doing arena

In order to enstablish control / create visibility on sharing / sitting, please implement the following sitting mechanism:
1) Commands to manage sitters: /make_sitter SitterName ~~~ reason ~~~, /list_sitters, /remove_sitter SitterName (this will enable you to see at any moment in time who's who without the need to hunt cheaters)
2) A sitter will use his password in order to login a toon that he sits on
3) Display the sitter name next to the toon name that someone sits on, ToonName (SitterName)
4) Blacklist actions like: trading of high valuable items, nomming tcs ...
5) Make trophies soul bound when sitting a toon
6) Ensure upon login / creation of a character that sharing password is banable by ticking a checkbox of some kind
7) Temporary ban for breaking the password sharing rule first time, perma-ban on second attempt

It's time to define clear borders where sharing is allowed.
Please allow a 2 week interval as a transition period.

I'll pick one thing from your post

If you have EVIDENCE (rather than some vague butthurt suspicion) that people are botting, then supply such evidence, either on the forum or directly to Glitch.

Then it can be stopped.

No evidence, just wild accusations with nothing to back them up ? Then I have to view anything else in your post as being full of crap too, and not worthy of reading

[Huggles]

Originally Posted by Glitchless

Rating realignment prior to rush. Similar to racing where there are qualifiers to determine your starting position. Ratings would be decreased at the start of rush week so that no team was more than 200 pts beyond the closest team behind them.

Yes please. There will need to be some sort of change so you're not being punished by getting fewer tokens than before, but a rating adjustment and end of season tournament would be nice.

[Glitchless]

Brau's suggestion relies on banning sharing outside his new mechanisms. Unfortunately he failed to read or understand:
All suggestions moving forward need to be ways to eliminate the advantages of sharing, not sharing itself, because it simply cannot be stopped.