Ladle 38+: Aliases (and a bit Seeding and Team Changes)

[sinewav]

*Note that aliases did not help DVAS at all Sunday.

Is that even a point to make? Aliases don't give you skill, they give you an advantage. Why is it so hard to understand.

So no one in DVAS had skill? Of course it's a point to make. That's the main purpose of this thread: aliases and their alleged negative effects.

I don't know what to tell you. I guess I'd be convinced aliases gave an advantage if there were some solid proof. You should make an experiment or something and report back. As I look over this thread it just looks like some teams have a bad habit of underestimating the competition. Even in the past Ladle results, there is no way to show the effect of aliases is any more significant than lag or any number of other factors.

However, I am now convinced arguments about aliases are completely silly and represent the epitome of trivial complaints. We should just resign ourselves to the fact that aliases are part of the game and drop the whole subject.

[syllabear]

I have a bit of a random question, but its still not been brought up here.

There is almost always an open team for ladles now. Say I wanted to (note, I don't actually) sign up for ladle, but just avoid it completely, except the gameplay. So I signup for ladle under an alias. Would people have problems with such things?

[dlh]

It's not a teams responsibility to make things fair and it shouldn't be either. Specially in a tournament. To make things exactly fair; we all have to go under alias and that's not a pretty picture. It won't be worth it to play, at least for me. Either we all know who we're playing against or we all don't. In consideration to that; In Ladle 36 the same player who went under alias said such words that he woke up expecting to play a lower skilled team, but came to see he was playing against us. Ironic he can say such things, I think.

We were really hiding, right? Signing up everyone by our common name on the Challenge Board and then putting the aliased names on there too (after you complained, the first complaint we got actually). We certainly fooled you! Stop trying to justify your team-switching by comparing it to my usage of uncommon names. What's silly is that by your own rules, you'd be banned for one Ladle for committing a Major violation.

[...] The whole bullshit drama was because of people stirring the shit.

The source of the drama was YOU and YOUR actions. It's naive to even dispute that.

About real alias abuse (for things such as team switching, playing for multiple teams, etc…):

Making authentication a requirement was a good step, but I don't think team captains should have the capability to /op their team members. Also, it's probably time to switch to using global IDs instead of names on the Challenge Board. I can make a MediaWiki plugin to expand the GID to the form of “Screen name (global-id@forums)” (*the screen name would be found from gridstats.com). This can be used until/if we switch to some other competition management system.

There's always going to be some loop-holes, but now we have regulations on how we can punish players. Problem players now must think twice about exploiting the rules, because there's actual consequences.

[gawdzilla]

Yay, Flex is done posting here.

Anyways, only reason DVAS had different names because............... it sounded cool. There was no thinking about an "advantage", no malicious intent at all.

[Concord]

Something like:
1 warning: 1 Ladle ban from being a Team Captain.
2 warnings: Suspension from non-Open Teams for 1 Ladles. 3 Ladle ban from being a Team Captain.
3 warnings: 1 Ladle suspension. Suspension from non-Open Teams for 2 Ladles thereafter (community service almost). Banned from fortress servers owned by ladle server admins for the month of the Ladle suspension. 12 Ladle ban from being a Team Captain.
4 warnings: 6 Ladle suspension. Suspension from non-Open Teams for 6 Ladles thereafter. Banned from Fortress servers owned by ladle server admins for 6 Ladle-months after violation. Permanent ban from being a Team Captain.
5 warnings: Permanent ban from the Ladle. Encouraged to be banned from all other Armagetron competitions.

wtf? this is going too far

I'm not sure it is. This hypothetical person with 5 warnings has consciously cheated at least twice, with good knowledge of what happens in response to that. They don't seem to care about missing Ladles or about the fortress community, so a ban shouldn't mean much to them. Might as well just keep them out.

[sinewav]

Anyways, only reason DVAS had different names because............... it sounded cool.

That's EXACTLY what I was thinking too. How cool is it to play a "snake-like" game and have players be signed up with snake names? I'm just mad I didn't do it first (although they later added other players with non-snake names, which was dumb).

This is the kind of stuff that makes me like aliases - being clever with them. Snake names: good. Names that end in "UNK": good. Binary names: Very good and very Tron appropriate.


Here's some unused, cool Tron-related name themes for later: Known computer virus names, motherboard parts, and Arma's default AI names (notepad, cycles3D, LaTex...). At one time I was going to put a CTF team together using Arma's bot states: pathfind, trace, combat, and survive. Hmm... still might do that.

Also, don't steal my ideas. I posted them here so I can call you a no good copycat loser when you use them later.

[Word]

default AI names (notepad, cycles3D, LaTex...).

zzzZZZzzZZzzZZ...

[Olive]

I challenge you not to stir unneccesary drama after this ladle, can you manage?

hahaha u fail psyko.

[Punish]

I dont see whats so bad about it. Aliases are just fun to have. In play, I dont think its in the best interest of the known team to set expectations for the unknown team, as they both should be playing their best.
it do seem like it could be a lil confusin though. like what if a completely different team had decided to add unk on the end of their name. it would probably stir drama. in the end i see no use fixin it.. cant differenciate between new players and hidden players.

[PsYkO]

I challenge you not to stir unneccesary drama after this ladle, can you manage?

hahaha u fail psyko.

*Paraphrase* I challenge you to reveal yourselves on the challenge board

Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (Snake Charmer (Olive@forums), Black Mamba, Cottonmouth, Copperhead, Sidewinder, Elle Driver(CMS), Sofie Fatale, Pai Mei, Hattori Hanzō, Esteban Vihaio, Rufus)

Fail.

TSP CH
CT's LIV DVAS 1
UNK 2

Fail.


If you didn't notice, I actually partook in useful discussion. Sine and I were the only ones not to get a warning from that thread, hence not stirring up drama.

Fail.

Round 2:

I challenge you not to stir unneccesary drama after this ladle, can you manage?

hahaha u fail psyko.

Hypocrite

[epsy]

It would be nice if PsYkO and Olive's respective last posts were ignored. Or we can lock this.

PS: And olive, just like a lot of other people, didn't receive a warning from this discussion. Only two warnings were handed out.

[Olive]

what warnings.

edit:

I releaved myself and I couldn't make it -_-

[PsYkO]

It would be nice if PsYkO and Olive's respective last posts were ignored. Or we can lock this.

PS: And olive, just like a lot of other people, didn't receive a warning from this discussion. Only two warnings were handed out.

Yet if you want to do any type of research, 100% of his posts (within the smurf discussion since Ladle 38) have been flame bait. If mods actually want to do their jobs, nip the flame baiting in the ass immediately, don't wait for a response and than act like you're so appalled and surprised that someone had the nerve (THE NERVE!!) to stick up for themselves.

[Tank Program]

Yet if you want to do any type of research, 100% of his posts (within the smurf discussion since Ladle 38) have been flame bait. If mods actually want to do their jobs, nip the flame baiting in the ass immediately, don't wait for a response and than act like you're so appalled and surprised that someone had the nerve (THE NERVE!!) to stick up for themselves.

I like to think of it as giving people a chance to grow and change. To let they themselves put down their pitchforks.

But consider your flamebait nipped.