I thought the admins most adored alliance was Evo.

You all are giving me a headache :P
I am going to blame Tella though and go tie him up now in the basement to be a playtoy thing for me and Patty!

well if mr copper pm them about the flaws and loopholes it had, then it should be dealt with. Its nice to have someone watching your back for you! I guess mr copper just got bored and pissed and decided to show the admins what can a hacker do and boom, there. Poor RD.

not poor rd. we colours deserve it and plenty more for past grievances. it is the people who, however, were never involved that were punished.

i can own my deletion, it was a long time coming for past sins. i can accept this, i did plenty of wrong and was never really punished for it. i realize it sounds both ways, we were unfairly punished but we deserved it.. but we didn't, some of us did. i am one of them.

whether they accepted his info or not, there is no excuse to have hacked so much as a limb off a tree with a hatchet, let alone any websites.

However you will take it braden, Laf didn`t do the fluff Rd did in this game. Laf had some occasional cheaters during the time line but you can't ever compare RD with Laf.

I personally think that if RD would have done it first, it would have got it away Laf style. But RD did it second and pretty close to Lafs 1st - and the admins cut in flesh when they notice it is becoming a habit.

I still don`t know if you are for real, our you still pad a long way for RD to return and that`s not my fault that i can never trust to much a person from there. Specially after i read some of RD mentality on those boards Orange posted. Wtf pal? That`s not the way we should play this game. You said you did fluff while young - but you did fluff while old too, because the current young there were like "training" among vets. I bet those responsible for RD mass delete are among the young squad and i am sure more than just those 2 were involved in that fluff - also other alliances on 1 A were gaining ill info in the detriment of others. What made me really say " go fluff your self for ever RD " is a screen shot from MD site, where a guy was posting MDs FA stuff and all the RDs were like commenting that info. I don`t know, maybe some of you there taught it is just a spy getting intel - but for sure many knew that is up there, because boxcar is hacked.

Did any RD color did anything to prevent fluff hitting the fan ? No ? Than please don`t pose into a victim and just take that as a man without many complains.

How the fluff did this devolve into discussing alliance politics?

You guys need to chill out, especially braden.

Vic, to address your main point, any and all discussion is welcome, including game mechanics.

wow Telly I don't quite think game mechanics should have anything to do with that conversation, but gl with it all.
thanks for your work over here btw

Hi Vic,

It is my belief that the extreme pace (turn rate) of the Express server is causing a lot of issues that don't exist on other servers.
a) Storing 360(360) turns can cause a lot of mayhem. That's 40% of the reset.
b) Slow response of mods exacerbated by the pace of the server, and the short duration of each reset. Some reports don't even get looked at since the reset is over.
c) DR abuse which was rampant in the past. Linked to the fact DR is still 24 hours and not scaled.
d) Tech leeching because allying cannot be undone for 3 whole days. Linked to the fact the 3 days isn't scaled down. Leeching for 60% of a reset is significant.
e) Special rules just for Express such as Commies being able to sell 60% made because of the pace of the server.

That is why I suggested the server be slowed down if there is insufficient support/mods/infrastructure to maintain the health of the server. My contention was that the rules wasn't vague/confusing (which Tellarion wanted feedback on). It is that the application of said rules is too slow compared to the server pace.

That makes sense to me, Xin.

however,
a) I like the mayhem of this server. That is one of the reasons I play express.
b) I think the proper response to this is to find a mod (Tellarion) active as the players on this server. I don't think changing turn pace/amt is a fair response to poor modship in the past.
c) I do feel DR abuse has been sufficiently addressed and I don't know if changing game dynamics is a fair response to this, it feels overdone to me. Good players can navigate DR well and integrate it into their strat without abusing any rules.
d) I especially liked your tech leeching provisions but I also feel that there is a certain benefit to letting players leech and then catching them. We all forget that Earth is also a community - so there is a dynamic in place that works. Cheaters are outed over time. Sometimes they do get away with it for a brief period, but in my dealings all cheaters come to the surface in Earth.
e) At first glance this scares me and sounds very drastic. I immediately think of how cheaters might be able to abuse this - crashing the market so much more severely than ever imagined before. Dumping cheap goods for friends in record amounts.


As usual, your points are logical. However I do feel the main fix needs to be a more active Mod - and we have one that just came to the rescue.

Vic, e) already exists... your a-c makes sense but I think your d) is kind of out there. Having people cheat/leech and having to attack them fosters community spirit or something? Is what you're saying?

b) My point is that 1 additional active mod isn't near enough. I'm thinking you want at least 5 mods so that any cheating report can be looked at within 6 hours maximum. Any longer than that, is over 90 turns of time, which is over a day's of turns on any other server. And 5 mods is so that they can cover each other should any mod cannot be around, holiday, etc.

c) DR abuse sufficiently addressed? What? They still require a moderator to tend to it. There has been a bunch of suggestions and discussions on how to fix it. Sure, it isn't as rampant now as 2 years ago, but that doesn't mean it won't return, or that it won't be abused again in the future. Just because something isn't being abused doesn't mean its potential for abuse is any less.

d) Many people don't play this game to play detectives. It is already annoying that people are using dishonorable methods to win, now you gotta put extra effort to find them. And then what? Many of these people don't even care if they are outed.

On DR, there's not much potential for abuse because people will be deleted if they abuse it. So, maybe they can dish out some harm briefly before being caught, but it won't get them anywhere. Since mods were given the green light to crack down on that, the problem has totally disappeared.

I do not think more rules and more government deter people from cheating. In this case, though, we are discussing the grey area of 'leeching' and not multi running type cheating.

I do think community spirit is fostered when we find and take care of cheaters - just do a case study on the express forum over the past month. MANY of us have banded together over these issues and it's been fun to do so. Many people who otherwise opposed one another, found common ground in this anti leech anti cheat parade.


BUT my overall point on d) was that earth is not just the numbers and the game, but it's also the community and the forums. It adds color to the forums to find cheaters.
let them win certain sets, do you guys really care that much? They are the losers for it and everyone legit will acknowledge the clean player as the winner ... so I wonder why some of us care so much about our finishes. Overtime we'll still all place up top, but if some rat is low enough to leech to try to out one of us, well then i'm not going to lose sleep over it.
personally i think we've had only 1 or 2 leech top finishes in the past many sets.


and xin - you have been talking about the DR abuse issue for a long time. it has been sufficiently addressed.
in the past, one someone would DR abuse , they would not get deleted.
now, every single time, and then some times in between, they are deleted.
what's the issue here?
there is VERY little DR abuse on this server now compared to what there was when you played it.

rules and language around DR was changed some months ago over here and it worked really well.

Yes, mods were given the green light to delete it. But that was meant to be a TEMPORARY MEASURE. So a temporary has become permanent because it was effective? What happened to all those proposed DR changes? What if there is no active mod that week? It is only effective if there is an active mod? A temporary solution is still a temporary solution. Fix the root cause.

Should I go quote the stickied thread at the top of the forum?

http://www.earthempires.com/...xpress-16899?t=1387119785

But Xin this is Express. How about all the temp fixes on Primary and Alliance that still need to be addressed?
I just don't think we should so drastically change the server.

well you didn't need to ask if you should go and quote the thread if you went ahead and did it ... lol.


"There's a series of changes intended for solo servers that are designed to resolve some of the DR abuse problems on the solo servers. Both qz and I have been so busy offline that we haven't had a chance to finalize and implement them"

qz and pang have a series of changes that have YET to be finalized and implemented. meaning they have their changes already and i have no problem with changes that come from that level

Do you know why Alliance gets all the changes? Because it is the only server qzjul plays on - all the changes made did not take into account how the changes would impact non-Alliance servers.

The last Primary/Express changes were only because I kept asking qzjul.

Why shouldn't we drastically change the Express server? qzjul has been drastically changing the Alliance server, including one that makes restarts have 70% of the resources of the killed country, and only take 15 turns to go OOP so they can go right back to suicide!

hehe..

You realize this was 19 months ago? Nothing was finalized. That's why there are no changes.

These were the planned changes: http://www.earthempires.com/...omment-15332?t=1376854014

Planned. But never finalized.

It is not the express server that keep players in this game so qzjul probably dont bother as much. its the alliance server that keep players within the game, of course that comes first.

anyway, if any of you dont like how express runs, dont play it. Every set theres about 100 odd (100-150) players still play them and it hasnt decreased in the past 1.5 years that Ive played. why bother to change it the way you like it, causing so many objections and rejections.

Precisely. I don't play Express. I keep coming back hoping to see some changes. Over time, I've come to realize I simply don't agree with the fundamentals of the server.

My opinions of this can be quite ... extreme. Nobody should be offended by what I post about suggested changes. I hope.

Vic, as I said, all ideas should be put on the table. Trying to eliminate cheating and foul play is directly tied into the game mechanics of the server(ie tech leeching and dr abuse, etc). As I am trying to implement some changes, now is a wonderful time to discuss mechanics.

Xin, your opinions are valued here. Maybe we should push for those specific implementations promised before we consider the larger scope of things on this server.

Tellarion, that sounds fair enough.

*the fluff mod walks in the room*

Xin is correct, so many changes were meant to be done, most would have made it easier for mods, made things more clear cut.

As for tech leeches, it's almost impossible for a mod to detect it, as we can only see allies when we compare countries and only if the compared countries are allied, hence the need for reports.

There are a heap of tools I would love to have for modding, like a watch list or some to flag people with tech allies when they have no labs

As per qz, the mod tools are actually the most complicated thing on this site. Which is really unfortunate because, as warster said, better tools would help us immensely.

Argh. Sounds like the mod tools need a bit of overhaul itself. I would like to ask a question. In the Report Cheater box, where you are asked to type in country numbers separated by commas, does it work if I type "1,2"? How about "1, 2" with a space? or "#1, #2" or other variants? Does the system parse the numbers correctly and then let you compare the reported countries? Or does it fail silently and no report gets received?

i had actually wondered the same thing. my two reports i have done, that i recall, i was never sure i had done it correctly..

Im not sure but the correct way is 2,4. No spaces, no # sign

Always seeing the good, Vic. That is what I like about you.




LMAO...nice, h2o!




Not quite 2-3 lines, but good job, blid.

why thank you hammer :p

out of curiosity, i know once that i used semi colons-- when asked for country numbers i used 1; 2 (or whatever the actual numbers were)

when you see the report, are you shown nothing, or.. what?

I don't think it goes through if improperly formatted. When I use the mod tool, it doesn't accept it with # signs or spaces.

If you want to test it, feel free to try 3 sets of formatting and i'll see which one makes it through.

You'll need 3 different people for this. You can only report once a day or something like. Which come to think of it,....why? I can understand you don't want people spamming it, but at least make it like 3 a day.

I will start laughing really hard if we find out that the majority of cheating reports never got received over the past 3 years because of improper formatting of "countries separated by commas". And then start laughing even harder if this is mostly the reason why mods are slow to respond to reports, or why no action was taken.

well xin i dont think it will turn out to be mostly the reason why mods are slow to respond to reports, only because the forums are often spammed with cries for mod attention with literally NO RESPONSE for days ... so even if they weren't receiving the reports, that is only one of two issues at hand

Do you realize how much time it takes to sort through these forums to actually get something that I could possibly take action on? Why not pm me or another mod directly, as some of you have figured out how to do...

There is a big sticky thread that has been there for a year asking you all to report issues ingame and not to rely on the forums. I have time to check my inbox and check the mod tools, I don't always have time to read every thread...

Xin, it might be part of the problem. I have only seen one report this round, and only 2 pairs of countries that were flagged by the automatic system. The past two sets, we had like a dozen at least.

The reports go through with commas because I always use commas and my reports have led to deletions. Maybe it just strips the commas out on the reports. I don't use # signs but maybe the same for that.

changes? what changes?

Don't be a fluff.