AeroS
Luxor Admin
Timmons[HAWK]
Posts: 1,138
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Post by AeroS on Mar 10, 2007 20:47:40 GMT
A tool that shows unowned or idle islands would be awesome. some one make a tool that does that and I will be eternally grateful.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
Posts: 4,148
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Post by Arminius on Mar 10, 2007 21:19:45 GMT
But that is not done, instead we have a vigilante group who persecutes suspected multis on evidence that occasionally seems extremely sketchy, while at the same time interpreting the rules to allow them to do things that stretches the definition of multi to the almost absurd. What is this vigilante group? And who's being persecuted? Natmus has written something very interesting on this, I think it's in the public section. A lot about alpha males. All based on the UK server, but presumably equally valid here.
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 10, 2007 22:13:04 GMT
What is this vigilante group? And who's being persecuted? According to dictionary.com, a vigilante is "any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime." If you read the forum (and the in-game forum), you will find numerous posts along the lines of "this person is an obvious multi, lets attack them". You will also find comments here and there going "what makes you think this account is a multi?", frequently without answer. I think I have even seen references to an "anti multi council". So, being a multi is against the rules and though not a crime in the larger social setting, it is a "crime" within the game. The question is who gave these players a mandate to deal with multis, and if the answer is that the they themselves did, then the term vigilante seems appropriate. Right, I read that a while back and I basically agree with it.
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AeroS
Luxor Admin
Timmons[HAWK]
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Post by AeroS on Mar 10, 2007 23:03:05 GMT
I don't think that attacking multi's is simply dealing out justice. I believe that because we are a peaceful alliance, we can use this as a reason to take islands that are owned. vigilantes operates unlawfully themselves to dispense their own sense of justice. We operate within the rules to dispense Culo! kickings, I believe the term vigilante as it refers to us, does not apply.
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
Posts: 4,148
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Post by Arminius on Mar 10, 2007 23:18:20 GMT
Well, I know what vigilante means, I was just wondering what group you were referring to. Both Morkin and FoM have representatives on the Anti Multi Council; the purpose of this is to make sure that only those who are really multis are attacked, and to avoid witch hunts as they happened on the UK server.
Needless to say that the AMC is not really very active, and nobody has been 'convicted' of being a multi.
Essentially IK is an anarchy, the law of the strongest applies. But that is not really a nice way to co-exist, so as far as I can see there's nothing wrong with building up social structures/institutions. You wouldn't argue against the police on the grounds that it's against the rules that some people can hit you whereas others can't.
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Natmus
Morkin Admin
Fight the power!
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Post by Natmus on Mar 11, 2007 0:17:04 GMT
IK is an anarchy, with only exeptionally outstanding cases of cheating being dealt with by the game admin. Everything else, and cases of doubt, will be handled, or not, by the community, or parts of it, on a case by case basis. Back on the .uk server Morkin took a great risk by taking out the DarkLady/PhoenixFlare (also just refered to as Sheldon) without the sanction of the main multihunters, as we believed that Sheldon had them completely fooled. Events proved us right, but we also had some luck on our side, especially on the timing of our actions. Before that one Morkin member had been attacked on the mere suspicion that he was a multi(not better defined than that), and even if he in the end were compensated for his losses, a lot of time (not compensated) were lost.
In the end I still believe that this game boils down to some sociological experiment. With only very lose restraints set from any outside source, how do we behave in this game, dependant on how our place in the hierachy is. Will we let power corrupt us? Is our relative strength in the game determining our percieved morals, and subsequent actions?
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 2:22:05 GMT
I don't think that attacking multi's is simply dealing out justice. I believe that because we are a peaceful alliance, we can use this as a reason to take islands that are owned. vigilantes operates unlawfully themselves to dispense their own sense of justice. We operate within the rules to dispense Culo! kickings, I believe the term vigilante as it refers to us, does not apply. Read the definition again, you can easily be a vigilante with a peaceful background and good intentions. But, I think it puts a question mark next to our claim that we are a peaceful alliance. The level of evidence generally put forth seems to be at a level where you could easily just brand someone as a multi just because you want to grow by a couple of islands. The rules are set by the admin of the game, he, and he alone, has the mandate to enforce them or to appoint deputies to enforce them. If you have not been deputized then your actions are those of a vigilante by the definition of the word. The fact that he chooses to not enforce them puts us in an interesting situation and it is really somewhat unfortunate because he is the only person with access to data to establish with any certainty if a player is a multi or not.
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 2:29:22 GMT
In the end I still believe that this game boils down to some sociological experiment. With only very lose restraints set from any outside source, how do we behave in this game, dependant on how our place in the hierachy is. Will we let power corrupt us? Is our relative strength in the game determining our percieved morals, and subsequent actions? I totally agree. What it boils down to for me is that the rule about multis is idiotic if it is not enforced at the admin level. As a true sociological experiment, the correct approach would be to remove the rule and make it up to the players if they will accept multis. If the answer is that we will not accept multis then spying could easily be expanded to provide more information about departing and arriving fleets which could be used to determine if players are indeed multiing.
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 2:52:15 GMT
Well, I know what vigilante means, I was just wondering what group you were referring to. Both Morkin and FoM have representatives on the Anti Multi Council; the purpose of this is to make sure that only those who are really multis are attacked, and to avoid witch hunts as they happened on the UK server. Needless to say that the AMC is not really very active, and nobody has been 'convicted' of being a multi. Essentially IK is an anarchy, the law of the strongest applies. But that is not really a nice way to co-exist, so as far as I can see there's nothing wrong with building up social structures/institutions. You wouldn't argue against the police on the grounds that it's against the rules that some people can hit you whereas others can't. I don't think I disagree with any of that, but you are in an interesting situation when you try to impose your sense of "right" and "wrong". Can you be peaceful and dominant at the same time? And what about integrity, how do we deal with multis in our own alliance? There seems to be a double standard where some kind of multis are acceptable but others are not.
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 3:11:17 GMT
A tool that shows unowned or idle islands would be awesome. some one make a tool that does that and I will be eternally grateful. Can you be a little more specific in terms of what you are looking for? I believe that there are greasemonkey scripts floating around that are capable of modifying the map, but I consider those in violation of the "change the surface of the game" part of §4, so I have chosen not to utilize them. I am sure google is your friend for finding them. An easy option, with relatively limited scope, would be to save a map page and run a script to convert it to a text representation that indicate the position of unowned islands. Would that be sufficient? What OS are you on?
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AeroS
Luxor Admin
Timmons[HAWK]
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Post by AeroS on Mar 11, 2007 3:58:35 GMT
I'm not really familiar with scripts at all and I am just starting to use firefox this week. What I am looking to do is... identify idle players and unowned islands with scores higher than 30. My spread sheet of islands I check every night is about 50 islands long and getting longer every night(quite tedious). If I can get that done automatically (without violating §4"change the surface of the game") I would be very happy. EDIT: And what about integrity, how do we deal with multis in our own alliance? There seems to be a double standard where some kind of multis are acceptable but others are not. If you know of a multi in our alliance, maybe you should bring it forward so we can deal with it. Open statements like this cast long shadows. Be specific.
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 4:33:33 GMT
If you know of a multi in our alliance, maybe you should bring it forward so we can deal with it. Open statements like this cast long shadows. Be specific. I don't want to pick on any players, but its not exactly secret, the player admitted as much, either in this forum or in the in-game one, and got advice about how to play the situation. Let me quote the rules: "§3 Each user pledges not to use more than one account; so-called "multi-users" are not permitted. It is thus forbidden to take unfair advantage by accessing another account or making alternative arrangements with other members (e.g. transport of armies or resources without immediate and equivalent reward; colonisation of islands). The administration of other accounts is only allowed for a short-term period, e.g. as a vacation replacement." Tell me how you interpret that in a way where the following is legal: Taking over an account of a player that is leaving the game and transferring the islands to you by fleet saving, etc? Because it seems to me that it is breaking 2 or 3 parts of that rule.
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2kcastle
Luxor Admin
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Post by 2kcastle on Mar 11, 2007 9:17:45 GMT
I'll have a go as it's me that your talking about,
"It is thus forbidden to take unfair advantage by accessing another account or making alternative arrangements with other members (e.g. transport of armies or resources without immediate and equivalent reward; colonisation of islands). The administration of other accounts is only allowed for a short-term period, e.g. as a vacation replacement."
It all depends on what you'd class as "immediate and equivalent reward" I swapped my .uk account for dragons .com account, it was certainly immediate so no problems there, as for equivalent thats a matter of personal opinion, i swapped 18 isles for 4, the biggest fleets on each account were 1600 lws and 240 lws respectively and my .uk account had nearly 800 catapults left on it. If you were to interpret that rule to the letter which is what you seem to want to do, then our crf and rrf are breaking the rules because the player we send them to has no way of making an equivalent reward, and sending resources to someone to help them out is also banned. ( actualy this rule is enforced in ogame where they call it pushing and can get you a 3 day ban ).
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n00bs
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Post by n00bs on Mar 11, 2007 17:28:21 GMT
I'll have a go as it's me that your talking about, "It is thus forbidden to take unfair advantage by accessing another account or making alternative arrangements with other members (e.g. transport of armies or resources without immediate and equivalent reward; colonisation of islands). The administration of other accounts is only allowed for a short-term period, e.g. as a vacation replacement." It all depends on what you'd class as "immediate and equivalent reward" I swapped my .uk account for dragons .com account, it was certainly immediate so no problems there, as for equivalent thats a matter of personal opinion, i swapped 18 isles for 4, the biggest fleets on each account were 1600 lws and 240 lws respectively and my .uk account had nearly 800 catapults left on it. If you were to interpret that rule to the letter which is what you seem to want to do, then our crf and rrf are breaking the rules because the player we send them to has no way of making an equivalent reward, and sending resources to someone to help them out is also banned. ( actualy this rule is enforced in ogame where they call it pushing and can get you a 3 day ban ). I really don't want to point at a specific player, but it was not you. The question for me is if a player gains an advantage by doing it. In your case, one person got replaced by another, nothing else, and I don't really have an issue with that. It didn't change the ordering of anything in the game, it just replaced one person with another. You are right though, I guess it is against the rule as written. And it brings us back to the question of who watches the watchmen, of who decides what is "right" and "wrong"? If you want to elevate yourself to that position, shouldn't you be beyond reproach? Edit: I am talking about the situation where a player in the alliance decides to quit the game and another player plays both accounts for a while until the departing players islands and resources are transferred to his own. The reason why I didn't want to point the finger at someone is that he was actually cheered on by members of the alliance when he disclosed what he was doing so you can hardly fault him for thinking that it is was acceptable. But unlike your violation of the rules, his actions have negatively affected other players in the game. In terms of number of islands, resource production and score, that player more or less doubled in a period of less than two weeks. Is that "right"?
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Arminius
Morkin Admin
Ich bin Bl?cher
Posts: 4,148
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Post by Arminius on Mar 11, 2007 21:45:40 GMT
Well, I must admit that I'd find that slightly dubious. Effectively it's the same as merging with a multi account. Being in an alliance doesn't mean that your isles are property of the alliance when you quit.
On the other hand, if the player donates the isles, that would count in favour of it being acceptable. What about shipping around stone and lumber within the alliance without payment? Nobody cares, as some of us have too much stone and lumber anyway, but technically it's against the rules. And if giving worthless stone for free, what about isles which have become worthless because you no longer want to play?
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