Tremulous Forum
General => Feedback => Topic started by: Echon on April 03, 2006, 08:40:56 am
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Certain people keep childishly causing problems -- destroying the reactor/overmind/spawns -- for the sake of pissing everyone off. Vote kicking them only makes them leave, change names, and reconnect. How about tacking on a nice 30 minute ban when a vote kick passes?
On that note, the same group of fools continues to shoot at base defenses over and over. A penalty should be added for that...
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yeah, it's really anoing.
Maybe the kick/ban could be also performed faster by the server-owner or the gamemaster.
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i don't think the 30 minute ban would be a good idea, the servers just need admins in them.
first game i played i got vote kicked out twice without saying a thing about a minute after i joined a game. i just kept connecting and the "childish player's" gave up kicking me.
if somthing like that is put in the game it will get abused, all it takes is two jerks and a server full of people who do not care enough to vote no.
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You were likely kicked because another guy kept joining and teamkilling bases. When he would get kicked, he would just rejoin under another random name. If he were just banned when he was kicked, you wouldn't have been touched. :)
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theres also the impersonators. ppl who change their name to match urs. its really annoying. i myself have gotten kicked 3 times from a server cause of this.
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/serverstatus
/callvote clientkick #
Haven't tried it yet myself but it should at least get around the name changing.
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The clientkick is broken. It was kicking the wrong players whenever someone tried to use it... could be user error, or it's not working right.
Whatever the case, a clientkick is almost the same as a normal kick. They can just come back.
Something needs to be done, because about 40% of the games of Trem that I've played so far (started playing last night) are ruined because of the same people coming in, deleting spawns.
I want Trem to become a good game. I really do. But with these people doing that, it turns people away. They go back to games like ET, where there are admins patrolling and cheat detectors to catch the exploiters.
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There seem to have some problems with the Kicking callvote interface.
Nickname with spaces in them fail to be kicked.
I tried:
/callvote kick some name
and found it did not work. However, I tried:
/callvote kick "some name"
and it did the trick.
Don't know about /clientkick because I can't seem to be able to get the clientID.
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i had people in my game coming in, and deleting any structures of use, just to piss people off,
before you can get him kicked he has ruined the game, and if you kick him, he just comes back.
KICK should ban that person's ip address permanently.
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Yea, and if you think about it what's the point of kick in it's current state? As an admin you'd do it if you just wanted to show that you meen business -- but when you can't do anything else (as a player) they'll just keep joining and doing it over and over again. Even a small 5 minute ban is better than a plain old kick. :)
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They are now using the voting exploit.
Because you cannot kick a person with a name with spaces in it, with out putting it in quotes, a person called "all but me is a **g" will call a vote on themselves.
This will make the vote "kick all".
If the vote passes, everyone on the server gets kicked.
Watch out for this person.
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Yeah I recently started playing with Die, Echon and Canadaman ;-) and it seems a third of these games are just spent sitting around trying to figure out how to stop these guys. MiniK and I had to just up and leave the beer garden as they had a man on each side that would destroy their teams base. I love this game and I am willing to wait it out, but it isn't half annoying lol.
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Bans BANS BANS BANS BANS fixes all 1 ban and BAM gone for a while
I remember some admin applied bans in gloom could last up to a month or longer depending on how evil the admin was.
Just had a big problem in mousesports server
it was both teams getting Screwed for several games out of
frustration no doubt. they can't hack it so they throw their little temper tantrum about not having the brain capacity to comprehend the dynamics of the game so they dumb the game to their level of just sincelessness. abusing the fact once kicked they just plop back in. Because what better way to pass the time then more or less sitting in front of the monitor gaining nothing but weight screwing people over who are just looking to play a good game with some good people
its even better when the culprate starts blaming innocents and they get caught up in a False kicking vote. Fun..FUN..F.U.N. .... errrrrrrrrr :x
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i just got back from tjw's server and i can say IM APPALLED by the ppl there.
the lljk's ppl are definately the griefers, and framers
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Yes, it is interesting. The morons go under the LLJK tag (some of the time), but the "real" LLJK guys do not seem to care.
I told one of them last night that there are people using their tag, screwing games.
The guy goes "yea I heard that, but haven't seen it".
That's all he said.
These guys need to take more interest in who's using the LLJK tag, clan tag or not, and change it if need be.
And the admins of all the servers have to get on the same page, and use that ban list in General Chat. One of the Admins from AKKA was nice enough to come in last night, and firewall one of the morons. But all the servers need to starting doing it.
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Two recent base deconstructors/saboteurs were
lljk nexterholland
lolman
Server admins, please check the logs to verify, get their ip or something and ban them for life. And tell other admins to do so.
Funny, I have never seen this happen to aliens. Very strange.
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An useful workaround would be to send BRIGHT RED&CAPS message to every team member whenever a teamate deconstructs a building, And another message whenever a temmate builds something. So it's easier to judge who's just relocating/tweaking the base and who's sabotaging.
Also, whenever a player changes name during a vote to kick him, he should be automatically kicked and banned. Normal players hardly ever change name. Same (ban) if he disconnects during a vote to kick him.
On related side, I think medipad (or whatever it's called) should push back players once they're fully healed. To prevent traffic jams.
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Two recent base deconstructors/saboteurs were
lljk nexterholland
lolman
Server admins, please check the logs to verify, get their ip or something and ban them for life. And tell other admins to do so.
Funny, I have never seen this happen to aliens. Very strange.
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An useful workaround would be to send BRIGHT RED&CAPS message to every team member whenever a teamate deconstructs a building, And another message whenever a temmate builds something. So it's easier to judge who's just relocating/tweaking the base and who's sabotaging.
Also, whenever a player changes name during a vote to kick him, he should be automatically kicked and banned. Normal players hardly ever change name. Same (ban) if he disconnects during a vote to kick him.
On related side, I think medipad (or whatever it's called) should push back players once they're fully healed. To prevent traffic jams.
I got nexterholland and a few others on my banlist.. I'm pretty sure there's a few of them in that group.
Some sort of master/shared banlist would be nice...
Also the suggestions about messages when things are constructed/deconstructed would be helpful.. it can get incredibly confusing trying to get rid of these blokes when they're changing names, calling kick votes of their own and working in groups to ruin the fun.
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i dont remember exactly what server but i think it was one of those newer ones with the nice colors for the server name but i have seen a lot of those morons come in with stupid names lik "eat my ass" and "fuck you".... when id see in upper left corner someone with name of "i hate u all" or "you all suck" i say to myself o crap looks like another idiot coming to ruin a game...maybe we should have a filter to stop people with insulting names from joining... i shouldnt remind everyone of someone who joined beer garden with name of "nigger hater" and started to make racist remarks..... :x
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Face it, this game could use a bit more Q3 OSP/CPMA commands.
Such as:
/lock
/referee (kick,ban)
Maybe something like cs admin mod had, where admins could send remote client commands to clients.. /unbindall :)
Too bad there is no guid for standalone version, altho something like ET(etpro) guid system could be used, where guid is generated by network MAC address and HD serial number.
TBH it's the only good solution to keep those ppl off the servers, it's better then ip banning.
PS: a bit off topic, but does anyone else have problems with ping sort in server browser(only switches first and last)?
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Ok, I think I got a dirty, but relatively simple workaround, which can be used (if implemented, boo )
introduce Warmup time of 30 or so seconds before game starts. And disallow joining a game once it has started.
Think about it. It would essentially allow for banning by vote. Once someone is kicked from the match, he can't join until it's over. I know it's imperfect, because people may randomly drop out during a match, but it's strictly better than having one server ruined for several hours.
I'll repply to points made by someone else in another topic:
These idiots have really made the game less fun, and I was thinking of ways that the damages these folks could do could be minimized.
-do not allow the last spawn to be deleted.
A bit too restrictive. May piss off people who know what they're doing (in a positive sense)
-it might be interesting if you have to team vote to delete the genrator/om.
Now this is a really good idea. You'd move reactor, make teammates aware of it, and consult it with teammates - all in one package. I really like it.
-make it take time to delete a structure.
What exactly would that accomplish ? Estabilishing new bases would be a pain in the ass.
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/lock /unlock (teams) would fix that.
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So is there any surefire way to kick these annoying people when the server host is not present ? I suppose it doesn't help cuz they keep coming back. So far nothing is capable of kicking a number of players due to unknown factors.
For example: yesterday there was this bastard who I tried to kick using /callvote clientkick # except that it always kicked someone else instead of him. I got the feeling that he changed the /serverstatus screen so we could not know his true #.
I just wanted to post a few psychologically effective steps in dealing with these people (as suggested by Mouse and modified by me) (I hope it's alright to post it here, I'm assuming the enemy will not try to counter this strategy):
1) Do NOT talk to them or acknowledge their presence in any way whatsoever.
2) Keep cycling the map. Vote to cycle the map until he leaves ... he derives fun from making people feel bad ... by cycling the map he gets no chance to do so, gets bored and leaves for another server. Also do not play with him ... he wants that.
3) Do NOT kick him if he has quotes in his name ... it may kick everyone. Kicking is generally NOT effective at deterring them. I hope vote ban will be implemented as this will definately help.
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So far nothing is capable of kicking a number of players due to unknown factors.
hey hey hey i didnt think i was a factor in this :o
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No ... not you ... I mean factors that cannot be easily determined ... factors that I have no clue about, besides I would have said Unknown not unknown if I was referring to you. :D
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a note on a few things:
-some ppl will try to think ur cheating. I myself have had this experiance. Oh sure, so what i have an awesome aim =), that doesn't mean im cheating
-some pretend to be the victim, and kick u instead
-some put the all word in front of their name
-the old fashioned griefers, block them or stand on the telenode or egg.
(LOL i remember one game where the entire humies team blocked a griefer while I bullt)
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Soon a modified version of Tremulous will be going up on AKKA and the QuakeDev servers. Changing your name won't evade a kick, there's a basic admin system in place, and destroying/teamkilling structures prints a message to the team...
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Thanks for your efforts Echon.
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You can thank R1CH more. He's done 99% of the work so far, I've mostly tested with him because I feel like vomitting. :)
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Just needed to add my .02 that the griefers are ruining a great game. Playing last night and _every_ match I played in 3 different servers had some clown screwing stuff up in it.
Something needs to be done to keep them in check, and it sounds like it is. I'm anxious to see the fruits of your recent labors put into use. Thanks for all the work you guys do on Tremulous. It's some of the most fun I've had online in quite some time, when there aren't griefers on every fraking server....
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The psychological warfare bit I posted above works amazingly well.
Two days ago I got everyone in a server to follow the simple guidelines, and the griefers left in less than 3 minutes !
Yesterday, I was not getting full compliance from all the people in the server ... not all of them were following the guidelines and it did not work as well ... it took about 5 minutes for the griefers to leave.
The biggest problem is that although these guidelines make griefers leave it does NOT prevent them from coming back in about 1 hour, which they do a lot of the time.
Anyway, it's good to hear the upcoming version will handle griefers better ... looking forward to it. Thanks to the makers of Tremulous for an awesome game.
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Ok, after another night of having games ruined by morons, I thought of a mechanic that might help encourage good citizenship. This assumes that there is a way to identify a player with a reasonable level of surety, like the player ID's in ET.
Basically, have a karma system. People get positive points from their teammates, presumably for "playing nice" and proving through their behavior that they are decent human (or alien) beings. Once they get above a certain threshold, they can build and de-build at will, like they can now. Until that point, maybe they can't do it at all, or there is a rather onerous time limit or something. The threshold would have to be high enough that a single (or even a couple) people alone couldn't nerf it. And it would have to adjust depending on the size of the server. They could be assigned during the between-game scoreboard time and it would minimally interfere with gameplay. Place a "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" icon next to their name on the scoreboard. Clicks on them add and subtract karma points. You can't add more than you have (maybe getting more for kills or karma that gets assigned to you?) and you can't subtract more than you've given.
I dunno. This is likely complex and impractical. I haven't _really_ thought it out so it might be a total dead-end, but I thought I'd throw it out here. I think something more scalable than "admins need ot be watching all the time" needs to be done. This also allows teams to neuter greifers quickly without risking banning people who are just noobs and do dumb stuff, or people who get impersonated, etc, etc. One downside I immidiately see is that the "pick up the base and move it right away" strategy would be hindered, but if you get a lcuster of people who hang around for afew games, that would be mitigated. Another down side is that it adds another thing to think about, and would encourage people to "class", and only biuld or only fight, but I think if the numbers were blanced right, that would would be avoidable.
Oh! Another idea, everytime you deconstruct a building, you lose karma based on how expensive the building is to build, and get it back when you build something back. This would slow the griefers down a _lot_ and still allow for quick base moves.
Ok, one more idea, somewhat unrelated. There is obviously some sanity checking done to see if something can be built in a certain place. A check needs to be added so that a spawn can't be built in a place where people will spawn and immidiately fall into an abyss, like on the underside of that clear bridge in that one little "crossroads" level the name of which escapes me at the moment. That was really obnoxious.
Anyway, given the power that a single individual has to totally ruin a game (which I think is problem pretty darn close to unique in Tremulous) I think that putting effort into a system that allows fast and reliable self-regulation _without_ the need of an admin would be time well spent.
In any case, thanks again for putting together such a fun game for us all to play with.
"Never understimate the stupidity of people on the Internet."
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A few notes on karma:
Algorithms exist that are resistant to massive attacks, see here: http://advogato.org/trust-metric.html. However trust algorithms are suspectible to a cascade problem, if somebody (A) who has rated lot's of people is rated that can cause a recalculation of all who are rated by A, which in turn can cause recalculations, etc. It's possible to code around that though, the easiest solution would be to use well defined levels so that if the level of somebody doesn't change no recalculation is needed.
With levels you lose the flexible threshold though. On the other hand levels mean you don't have to design and implement the algorithm yourself (the Advogato one is implemented in a few GPLed libraries). Plus I don't see the use of a flexible threshold, those that are expected to behave in a small team can be expected to behave in a large team too.
For karma to work best it must be persistent. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it should be persistent across servers. This makes things a lot easier on the good players.
Losing karma based on deconstructing is kinda superfluous if you can't build without a bit of karma anyway.
On the other hand requiring a certain level of karma for base building sounds like a very good idea. It would at least stop the most common trolling approach.
One can also think of high karma folks to get some additional, limited, powers. I'm specifically thinking of initiating a vote for a one hour IP based kickban with an automatic recognizable note in the logs (so that the server admin could easily make the ban permanent).
Now to the downside of karma. You should be aware what karma will be used for. It will not only be used against trolls and such but also against new players who are just getting into the game. One would hope it won't, but I've seen enough folks constantly shouting insults at their team because they don't do well enough (ironically these folks never seem to try to coordinate their team). On the other hand it would also be used against such folks (I wouldn't hesistate to deal out some bad karma when somebody repeatedly calls my team names) which would mitigate the damage.
Also there is the risk of the opponents using karma to damage the enemy team. But then, those doing that will most likely not have much karma so wouldn't be able to do too much damage.
The biggest problem with any karma based system is to get people to deal out positive karma. Dealing out karma requires some energy. On the other hand it's likely some folks would do it regulary, to improve the game. As people who care about the game are most likely to get the best karma this would somewhat mitigate this problem.
As you have read in the previous paragraphs I believe that karma wouldn't only help with trolls and co but also with improving the atmosphere of the game in general. And it would encourage playing for the team instead of going out and killing. I'm personally more inclined to reward somebody constantly repairing our base (that's something that even karmaless folks should still be able to do btw) than the top shooter of the team.
As for how much work this would be: a connection to a new server would have to be added in the server code. Plenty of code would have to be added to make the game karma aware. A few commands would have to be added. The GUID/karma server would have to be coded. All in all quite a fair amount of work. And double the time you expect because there will be bugs ;).
Ok, hope that made sense :).
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A few notes on karma:
For karma to work best it must be persistent. In fact I'd go so far as to say that it should be persistent across servers. This makes things a lot easier on the good players.
True, but it seems that something that ambitious would be a PITA to implement blind. I think it would be wise to go after something simpler at first that at least works, and then move up to the "universal karma" theory later. Another option that may be simpler would be to have a karma score stored on the client that is cryptographically signed by the server so it can't readily be cheated. I think though that if the system were implemented carefully the inconvenience of "per connection karma" would be limited. Similar to XP in ET, the beginnings of matches would be slowed down, but once a cluster of people have been playing for a bit, it would be largely transparent becuse the people there would (theoretically) have gained sufficient karma that it would not be neccesary to worry about it anymore and it becomes transparent until someone new joins up.
Losing karma based on deconstructing is kinda superfluous if you can't build without a bit of karma anyway.
In this case karma would only be required to deconstruct. In practice, griefers rarely use the ability to construct to cause problems. Once you build stuff you then have enough points to remove as much as you have built, but no more. This would also only be neccesary at low levels, once someone has good enough karma, the destruct penalty could arguably be removed. This would also be largely unneccesary if the "universal karma" system were possible.
One can also think of high karma folks to get some additional, limited, powers. I'm specifically thinking of initiating a vote for a one hour IP based kickban with an automatic recognizable note in the logs (so that the server admin could easily make the ban permanent).
That's a good idea. Allows the ability to dynamically appoint "pseudo-admins" which could be useful for dealing with all sorts of miscreants, not just the base-destroying griefers.
Now to the downside of karma. You should be aware what karma will be used for. It will not only be used against trolls and such but also against new players who are just getting into the game. One would hope it won't, but I've seen enough folks constantly shouting insults at their team because they don't do well enough (ironically these folks never seem to try to coordinate their team). On the other hand it would also be used against such folks (I wouldn't hesistate to deal out some bad karma when somebody
repeatedly calls my team names) which would mitigate the damage.
This is true, and I agree that it would be sufficiently mitigated. The same controls that would be neccessary to prevent the griefers from nerfing the system in their favor should work to prevent them from using it against someone as well. In any case, there's a strong argument that this possible downside is an acceptable risk to solve to griefer problem.
Also there is the risk of the opponents using karma to damage the enemy team. But then, those doing that will most likely not have much karma so wouldn't be able to do too much damage.
The biggest problem with any karma based system is to get people to deal out positive karma. Dealing out karma requires some energy. On the other hand it's likely some folks would do it regulary, to improve the game. As people who care about the game are most likely to get the best karma this would somewhat mitigate this problem.
The distribution of points would be per-team, not server-wide. That would prevent one team from nerfing the others' karma and provide an incentive to give out your points. "We can't win if I don't award these." Similarly though, people would (again, theoretically) want to be careful with a finite resource which if used on the wrong person gets their base wiped out... ;)
As you have read in the previous paragraphs I believe that karma wouldn't only help with trolls and co but also with improving the atmosphere of the game in general. And it would encourage playing for the team instead of going out and killing. I'm personally more inclined to reward somebody constantly repairing our base (that's something that even karmaless folks should still be able to do btw) than the top shooter of the team.
I agree completely.
As for how much work this would be: a connection to a new server would have to be added in the server code. Plenty of code would have to be added to make the game karma aware. A few commands would have to be added. The GUID/karma server would have to be coded. All in all quite a fair amount of work. And double the time you expect because there will be bugs ;).
Ok, hope that made sense :).
Indeed it did make sense. And it will be a ton of work, especially to get it "right". However, from a player's perspective, this sort of work would do more to improve the game than anything else I can think of at this point. The biggest bug in Tremulous is the players. Isn't that awesome? "No patch for human stupidity". Woo.
Doing it well and "right" would also provide a strong foundation to build more "game" features on. And putting in little bits and pieces slowly would also likely make the work visible and give a big increase in playability. Which could grow the player base significantly. Even if it proves unfeasable to fully implement a true universal karma system, even a broken and impartial one will likely do more good than harm.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I had hoped that posting this would illicite this sort of response. Hopefully it will provide some food for thought for people who actually have the skills to implement it. :)
-deque-
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True, but it seems that something that ambitious would be a PITA to implement blind. I think it would be wise to go after something simpler at first that at least works, and then move up to the "universal karma" theory later. Another option that may be simpler would be to have a karma score stored on the client that is cryptographically signed by the server so it can't readily be cheated. I think though that if the system were implemented carefully the inconvenience of "per connection karma" would be limited. Similar to XP in ET, the beginnings of matches would be slowed down, but once a cluster of people have been playing for a bit, it would be largely transparent becuse the people there would (theoretically) have gained sufficient karma that it would not be neccesary to worry about it anymore and it becomes transparent until someone new joins up.
Hmm, per server karma would indeed be a good first step, provided the karma system is coded in such a way that it can be easily moved to a central server later.
The distribution of points would be per-team, not server-wide. That would prevent one team from nerfing the others' karma and provide an incentive to give out your points. "We can't win if I don't award these." Similarly though, people would (again, theoretically) want to be careful with a finite resource which if used on the wrong person gets their base wiped out...
Hmm, good idea. Would be slightly tricky if the griefers are all in one team and the good guys in another, but a simple map change and stuff should solve that.
Indeed it did make sense. And it will be a ton of work, especially to get it "right". However, from a player's perspective, this sort of work would do more to improve the game than anything else I can think of at this point. The biggest bug in Tremulous is the players. Isn't that awesome? "No patch for human stupidity". Woo.
Unfortunately as Einstein has noted human stupidity is infinite like the universe, though he wasn't sure of the universe. But karma indeed holds a promise to increase player enjoyment.
Doing it well and "right" would also provide a strong foundation to build more "game" features on. And putting in little bits and pieces slowly would also likely make the work visible and give a big increase in playability. Which could grow the player base significantly. Even if it proves unfeasable to fully implement a true universal karma system, even a broken and impartial one will likely do more good than harm.
Well this is an open source game and it has the advantage that where you don't need to adapt the client development can go very quickly (developing server based software is very pleasant, no rollout problems). Looking very quickly through the source it appears this can be done for a large amount of commands.