Fix for boosting issue - restoring instant quit replays

[fig]

Of course  instant quit replays shall be made visible . 
There is not even a subject of negotiation .
Common logic .
I wonder why they arent visible already .

Edited March 26, 2021 by TALΩS (see edit history)

[Tirreggregars]

22 minutes ago, TALΩS said:

Of course  instant quit replays shall be made visible . 
There is not even a subject of negotiation .
Common logic .
I wonder why they arent visible already .

Because sm's servers are very weak

[Raul]

On 3/26/2021 at 6:34 AM, Tirreggregars said:

Because sm's servers are very weak

It has nothing to do with server performance, it's just not interesting to have 0 turn replays in your battle history.

Imagine, you open a replay and it immediately shows the "opponent has quit" tab, it makes no sense whatsoever, and this was a decision made nearly a decade ago, so I highly doubt the developers were aware of "boosting", not like being able to see instant quit replays would solve the boosting issue, as CleverName have explained multiple times.

[SawzAll]

On 2/24/2021 at 1:11 AM, CleverName said:

How does showing replays change boosting? Boosters will still either insta quit or just played intentionally lost matches. Fundamental issue is that arena lacks many players at any given time, which allows boosting to occur.

Additionally, replays won't help much - then you're going to start accusing insta quitters who have an easy loss of boosting. As the #1 player who gets insta quit against, you'll see how many "boosters" I have for example. To play more devil's advocate, if someone wanted to look "legit" for this - they would just play a counter that loses against the main account, thereby justifying an insta quit. These days most boosters boost a little here and there, so I don't think it'll be as easy to detect as you might think. 

And to play devil's advocate more - everyone in top ranks knows who manipulates arena hardest and their style of it. This isn't an individual players issue; more of a clan issue imo. You talk of solo medals but completely forget about clan medals - who you can argue get hit more often and consistently by boosted clan results. 

Thankfully with the most recent ban wave, I think boosting will calm down, but time will tell...And to give some perspective, boosting affects maybe 0.0001% of SM players.

TLDR: Boosting isn't a big issue. But the fix (if we wanted to pursue) would be to increase # of players in arena, not replays.

First, it might reveal who's helping, or if the person has alts, what their alt names are, so that someone could in theory report the replay and the player to Gato and have the alt purged.  I don't mind alts: I have one, and I like it because it lets me play SM using two different philosophies.

But when used for boosting purposes, it harms the game.

You might say "everyone does it."  Sure, maybe that's true.  But does it make it right?  I doubt it.

I'm not pointing my comments at you or anyone else.  And I think you're getting at something I agree with: I think the hacks are the worst part, and that fixing those for good (not ban waves but programming) will probably clear up most the boosting.

And I think your solution of more players in the arena might help.

I also think that if people just up and decided to spend one month not boosting (i.e. those who are good people, not the hackers, they won't agree to that) it would be nice just to see what would happen.  Think of it like an experiment.

Me, I might decide to fight my alt against my main some day, just so that I can test my own builds in a more realistic environment than WU.  (But WU is actually very realistic when it works right, so I'm not dissing WU.)  But I will never do so to boost my arena points.  I personally believe boosting is unchivalrous.  It would be like the medieval knight who fights other weak knights just to make themselves look better (i.e. intentionally not fighting people that are about equal to them).

[Shared-NW]

i'm an Alt and i have alts, but in all these years of play I have never fought against my alt.

this means that only one player can't do it. In a legit way ofc.

[Username4]

On 4/1/2021 at 10:25 PM, Raul said:

It has nothing to do with server performance, it's just not interesting to have 0 turn replays in your battle history.

Imagine, you open a replay and it immediately shows the "opponent has quit" tab, it makes no sense whatsoever, and this was a decision made nearly a decade ago, so I highly doubt the developers were aware of "boosting", not like being able to see instant quit replays would solve the boosting issue, as CleverName have explained multiple times.

Firstly, if a player, on a day to day basis, has instant quit replays, from the same accounts, one could assume he/she is boosting.

No, it is not interesting, but it is also not interesting to have a player win every week just by boosting, also it is more interesting than having 0 replays innit, at least you get to see who it is that they're playing against.

Lastly, there is another solution, no more instant quitting, meaning a match must last 10 turns for you to be able to quit. Should help fix counters partially at least, although it will give them rewards which is kinda stupid imo. But they will have to wait 10 turns until they can quit against the person who would have beaten them.

[Shared-NW]

4 hours ago, Username4 said:

match must last 10 turns for you to be able to quit

how if net falls down? or if i restart the router? think seriously about solutions.

Must act before to prevent the possibility of boosting or at least significantly reduce it.

[Username4]

3 hours ago, Shared-NW said:

how if net falls down? or if i restart the router? think seriously about solutions.

Must act before to prevent the possibility of boosting or at least significantly reduce it.

Hm true, didnt consider that

[CleverName]

Best way to fix boosting: prevent people from matching the same accounts together in short succession. Showing replays doesn't really do anything - it just shows how people are boosting (which all the top ranks already know who boosts who...it's really to appease the noobs who don't know how top ranks work). 

If Gato can find a way to solve match fixing - that's more effective and scalable than showing replays...But as I mentioned earlier (somewhere) - boosting affects less than 0.0001% of the player base...I'd prefer Gato focuses on actual important stuff, like patching tabbing, releasing new items (eventually), and hopefully changing the game up a little. Not saying they shouldn't think about boosting - but if you look from a historical perspective - it's always been around and top ranks are used to it - better to use your time to drive revenue vs. work on something that won't (imo)

[SawzAll]

2 hours ago, Username4 said:

Nah, I just can’t be bothered to have this petty discussion with clever acting as if he wants what’s best for everyone when we all know he boosts and is just proposing a fix that he can easily get around.

Seems to me like it's the opposite: you're loving this petty discussion. 

-----------   NEW REPLY ----------

I think the replay system should include all insta-quits.

And all non-ladder matches (i.e. even pick up games in the chat).

Basically every match between (what should be) two sentient human beings.

If that means major work to the SM game in terms of coding, so be it.

I've always liked full transparency.

And it would be cool if we could see what accounts are boosting what other accounts.

Edited June 12, 2021 by SawzAll (see edit history)

[Lord Gorgon]

Everybody in top clans knows who boosts and who doesnt. Who boosts a lot and who boosts as "optimisation".

 

Replay displaying wouldnt change much besides making it visible to the ones unaware.

Considering making alt accounts forbiden is impossible, only realistic solution to fix boosting (which the administration do not even adress as an issue btw) would be to forbid it and deploy something similar to the "cheater report form".

 

Noobs.

[Atusiff]

It seems this topic is mainly for the benefit of the game. As of now, and a few others might agree with me. I think the real quality of life changes we need are more developers and hardware updates. 
More devs: I’ve heard rumors that Alex is the only dev working on SM. This is bad and hiring more will increase productivity *a lot*
Hardware update: I’ve also heard rumors that the SM hardware is extremely outdated, and updating this could increase the the usability of Alex’s anti-cheat, in turn making cheaters go bye-bye.

 

One downfall to my ideas that I’ve heard is that accounts would be set back by six months. I know this is a lot of work, and for some will bring you back to square one. But I’m the long run, which Alex is said to plan on, this will rid the game of cheaters for a long while.

[rc]

1 hour ago, Atusiff said:

More devs: I’ve heard rumors that Alex is the only dev working on SM.

I can’t blame you for thinking Alexander is working alone on SM. After all, it’s taking ages for a new item to be released.

But I’ve to squish that rumor with this quote.

 

As you can see from that quote, Alexander mentioned team, suggesting he isn’t working alone on SM.

I remembered Alexander discussing more about his team on the old forum. But since the old forum is gone now, I can’t access that team info anymore.

From what I remembered, Alexander mentioned 2 people working on SM and they’re time-sharing the development with Battle Dawn. You’d have to ask Alexander for the facts.

Don’t quote me on this. My memory is sketchy. However, the part that Alexander has a team is solid info, at least from what I quoted him on.

1 hour ago, Atusiff said:

Hardware update: I’ve also heard rumors that the SM hardware is extremely outdated

For some reason, I find that info questionable. Since I don’t know the facts, I can only question its validity. Alexander would know the details.

I’m baffled why you need to go on rumors when you can easily ask Alexander for the facts on SM Discord. After all, he’s readily available on there.

[Atusiff]

52 minutes ago, rc said:

I’m baffled why you need to go on rumors when you can easily ask Alexander for the facts on SM Discord. After all, he’s readily available on there.

The only way I've been able to contact him is through his discord server when he's online. And from my experience there is no set time online, as it is sporadic like any other discord user.

[Raul]

59 minutes ago, rc said:

For some reason, I find that info questionable. Since I don’t know the facts, I can only question its validity. Alexander would know the details.

I’m baffled why you need to go on rumors when you can easily ask Alexander for the facts on SM Discord. After all, he’s readily available on there.

That information did come from the Discord, Alexander was the one who said the hardware is outdated, and well, he's currently the only one doing pretty much everything to SM, calling him a CEO is an understatement.

 

Two things are good to note:

1. The anti-cheat is still under development, those things take time, whenever Alex decides tries to give us an idea of the complexity, the conversation takes hours. The problems he's facing right now aren't even problems that would normally exist in the worst scenarios.

2. While it does feel unfair to have only him as the current administrator, it doesn't matter as a business, he can just hire more people anyway, the problem is we are on a really brittle base, very hard to work on, especially without impacting stuff that already exists, the reason he didn't hire more developers yet is because himself don't understand how the SM code works yet, the documentation is very poor, so before hiring people he's planning to actually have a product for them to work on, and not hire people to figure out how things work to be able to work on it.

This is still not all there is to that, but since this isn't on the topic's matter I'll  leave it at that.

[OKI DOKI]

He need to think and take it easy evaluating next move. Chill out. Takes time.