completed Mults: persistant [vote_counter] counter per account; increased by each /vote

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

update 2018-07-29:

Reporting by menu will be implemented (as explained in Episode 179 of the V-LOG).

 

 

 

 

this idea consists now of three parts:

 
1) store number of /vote's per account
     [voting_counter]

 

This feature

• counts how often specific players/accounts they've been /vote'd in a [vote_counter]
• and allows the battle mods to hunt those players/accounts down -> ONLY -> if they are currently in a battle and currently /vote'd again.

 

 
 
 
Details:

How does the [vote_counter] work?
If a tanker is voted to be a mult or saboteur (/vote command in the chat), then the [vote_counter] counter for this account is increased by +1.
If an account is used for multing very often, his [vote_counter] will raise fast (>1 >2 >3.... -> a week later: >171 >172 >173 >..)
 
 
How does the [vote_counter] help Battle Mods?
Battles with high /vote numbers are marked for the battle mods in the lobby view. Lets assume they are marked yellow - and usually there are a lot of those.
After the introduction of the [vote_counter] feature the following single battle will be marked even brighter:
> from all battle with a player/account, that is actually voted
> this one contains the player/account with the currently higest [vote_counter] value of all currently voted tanks
 
It is most likely that the batte mod will spot a true mult there. So he can join, check the situation fast and punish this player/account.. then move into the lobby. As the last mult was removed from the battle, the next battle with a high [vote_counter] rating is marked.. and there he goes...
 
 
 
What if I get /voted by some troll?
The [vote_counter] will wear off (reduce itself) over time. If you get /voted for wrong reasons or by trolls, those will be worn off after a few days, while mults will accumulate large values in their [vote_counter].
 
Examlpe:
The wear_off could be like

• reduce [vote_counter] by 5 each day I am online.
• or reduce [vote_counter] by 'x' per each hour I play (they have our online times as they reflect it in the ratings)

With wear_off:
A typical mult will collect much more then 5 votes per day in average, so his [vote_counter] will continue to grow
A typical player that gets voted for no valid reason from time to time will dive at very low values.
 
Of course this wear-off has to be tuned to a usefull value. It think this tuning is very easy done in the live system by looking on how the values grow. The fast growers have to be preserved, while the slow-growers should be canceled by wear_off.
Generally the wear_off should be slower, the higher the [vote_counter] value rises -> some randomly reported players benefit from fast wear off's; but professional mults have troubles to reduce their [vote_counter]
 

 
 
 
2) Reporting by MouseClicks + inGame explanations
Proposal: Add a report possibility it in the mini-Menu, like shown in the picture below

 

 
 
 
Details:

The use of the /vote command is quite a pain for complex usernames (c00l_c0z_0f_l337).
Listing invalid reasons helps the players to learn to differnentiate what behaviour is against the rules and which not. Clickin on those invalid reasons _is_ possible, but it does not produce a valid vote - it will just give an explanation why this is an invalid reason (>> and therefore relieve the battle mods).
I assume 99.5% of the players never read the rules, so having them learn the rules in-game is most usefull.

• [Kills me all the time]     gives an explanation like:
  "Sorry that you face such a strong opponent. Beeing able to kill other tankers more often is not considered as sabotagte, because killing other tanks is part of the game. Maybe consider playing battles with lower ranks in the meanwhile. "

 

 
 
 
3) Advertise it in a vLog

 

Tell the players about

• the new report/vote menue mechanism
• about the rules for reporting
• about what happens if they abuse it

 

 
 
Change log

 

 

• 2016-11-07: The feature will blend in well with an >>activity rating of players per battle
• 2016-11-07: I_NuB_I asked how to handle random votes while not multing, as wrong votes are common. I propose to have a constant wear_off, that deacreses the [vote_counter] for each hour you play by just a little. Mults will still overshoot while randomly voted players will face no suspicion.
• 2016-11-08: The wear_off should be slower, if the [vote_counter] is very high, so that professional mults have no relieve if they pause for a week or so. See post#4.
• 2016-11-15:Simpler reporting + less reports due to wrong reasons + vLog advertisement
• 2016-11-23: simulated raise o [vote_counter] for mults, normal players, and ocasionally trolled players

 

 

[Maf 32,300]

Valid

[vltr]

[Guest Maserati]

Some people vote people for no reason... How to get past this? They must suffer a bad vote counter and be under surveillance for even a short/long time?

---

Good idea tho ;)

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Some people vote people for no reason... How to get past this? They must suffer a bad vote counter and be under surveillance for even a short/long time?

Let me make an example:

Difference [typical mult] <-> [invalid voted normal player]

 

 

(figures can be +/-, but the direction is the same):

 

-> Let's assume this happens to me, and I get +5 on my [vote_counter]. Maybe i am a noob, and this happens to me 3x a week, so that my [vote_counter] after this week will be about 15.

 

-> A typical account that is used for multing on a regular base will reach those 15 withing a single hour; will maybe reach 30 within a day, and will have about 200 after a week.

 

 

 

So [vote_counter] after this week:

[typical mult = 200] <-> [invalid voted normal player = 15]

So overall this will work.

 

 

---

 

Still you have a point.. because if I go on to accumulate +15 per week, then sooner or later I will be in the "suspicious" range as well. I had some ideas.. but they were not mature enough while I typed the starpost.

-> Thinking about it now, I think the [vote_counter] could wear off with time.

 

 

 

The wear_off could be like

• reduced by 5 each day I am online.
• or by 'x' per each hour I play (they have our online times as they reflect it in the ratings)
• The wear_off should be slower, the higher the [vote_counter] value rises. This is not an issue for some randomly reported players; but it makes a large change to professional mult accounts.

With wear_off:

A typical mult will collect much more then 5 votes per day in average, so his [vote_counter] will continue to grow

A typical player that gets voted for no valid reason from time to time will dive at very low values.

 

Of course this wear-off has to be tuned to a usefull value. It think this tuning is very easy done in the live system by looking on how the values grow. The fast growers have to be preserved, while the slow-growers should be canceled by wear_off.

 

 

 

So the [vote_counter] for mults will sure top over the typical player.

[Phoenix.Raised 5,992]

Where would this [vote_counter] store information?

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Where would this [vote_counter] store information?

The dev's have to decide that.

but I guess the most apropriate location is right in your tanki account data, where your name and experiance and ... are stored as well.

[Tani_S 736]

Thumbs up  ;)

It sounds like the penalty point system of traffic rules - too many points in a short period of time and your driver license is lost :lol:

[Relate 714]

I think a Star Rating for players would be a better idea. 

 

You will start with 5 stars, and every time you are voted out of a battle you will lose a star. 

With each star lost, you will lose previlages to join a certain battle mode, e.g. 

4 stars = can't join PRO battles. 

3 stars = can't join CTF/ CP

2 starts = can't join TDM 

1 star = account warning

0 = Account blocked.

 

Of course, you can gain back the stars by participating in a battle and getting a hefty amount of crystals + exp. 

 

:o

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

 

I appreciate your efforts in solving the massive and major problem of cheating, unfortunately I suggest you to give up any idea based on the /vote feature since:

• There are 27 battle moderators to watch thousands of battles
• 3 players only use this command (including you, me and my dog's account

I don't think you really understood his post.  And I know for sure I would use this.

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

I appreciate your efforts in solving the massive and major problem of cheating, unfortunately I suggest you to give up any idea based on the /vote feature since:

• There are 27 battle moderators to watch thousands of battles
• 3 players only use this command (including you, me and my dog's account)

 

The thing is, that from those 1000s of battles _exactly_one_ would stand out on each server: the one with a reported mult, which has the highest [vote_counter] rating in his account.

 

Hinted by that, the battle mods to use their time way more efficient.

 

If they spend the beginning of their work hour with hunting down 3 players reported by this feature, and the rest of the hour with random votes, they most likely can double or tripple their amount of banns/blocks per hour. And this would be very usefull :)

 

Especially, if you let your dog play more often, so the [vote_counters] will be filled well  ;)

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

thnx for your always fun to read comments ;)

 

I know that /vote is unlikely to lead to a battle mod's attendance in the case you /vote someone.. but that's just because it was you'r nick who /voted' them :p :p :p

 

No.. seriously: sure the chance is small. But that's all this thing is about: to increase the chance.

Noone used freeze. Now they made it stronger and it is used again. People use what works, if it works and if it solves their problems.

If tanki would implement that, they can also tell about the normal /vote command in the vlog and that they made an "improovement" so that mults can be detected faster. This should give the thing a kickstart.

 

But tell me.. how do you think this system could be abused _efficiently_.

If some trolls /vote abitrary players it levels out by itself.

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

Reading your post gives me an idea:

Is there any reason why someone ranked in the upper 40% of the scoreboard should be voted?

(The only reason that I can think off is if the leading team holds the last flag and does not cap for a very, very long time. But this is countered very easily by going on pause.. sooner or later they will loose patience and cap)

So deactivting the possibility to vote well scoring players would relieve the battle mods of some work; and prevent fraud.

 

 

Sure the number of battle mods is too low; but reading some posts in the "virtual office" thread let me think, that the training and dropout rate is high, so that the number could not be increased easily + cheap ("for free" in terms of real money).

So as the number of battle mods can not be increased easily; while the number of battles _should_not_ be decreased; then an increase of efficiency seems the way for me to go.

 

 

Of course kick2.0 would be the most best solution.. but it was obviously rejected by the game.

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

I know for sure you should stop posting hastily dozens of light comments every day and start reading carefully instead to finally propose readers coherent and detailed comments. It's not the first time you misread my posts and reply off topic, so either you're trolling or you're too lazy to understand what I write - I consider I am clear enough and justify my arguments though.

Know for sure? Wow, look at someone who's a little too self-assured for his own good.  Many of my comments are very detailed and structured; the reason I don't post like that all the time is because many readers don't like to read text walls. Keep in mind most of these people are younger teenagers and kids, and they do not like to have philosophical discussions over a game.  I don't misread your posts, in fact, I read every post carefully before I reply.  Assuming I'm trolling or lazy is immature and just plain wrong.  

 

I have nothing to add to this idea (being great as it is) so I'm just taking a neutral standpoint and clearing up small points. If you chose to incite an argument here you are the only one who has anything to lose.  

 

As for replying off topic, most of your replies are off topic, not mine.  Your own topic descended into an argument about low-rankers joining Gismo battles when the original topic was about Reasons you will never Invest in Tanki. Fine example of hypocritical and unnecessary criticism. 

 

Your post brought up the fact that there are not enough battle moderators to respond to this feature effectively, as they are already overworked. I merely remarked that this idea would actually make it easier and less stressful for the battle moderators to catch mults and saboteurs.  After all, the /vote command almost never works.  In this way moderators could keep track of mults even when they are not in battle or offline, which creates less time conflict, enabling them to work more efficiently.

 

The abuse of this system would not be a problem for two reasons:

1.  Not everyone will vote a mere "drugger".  Only certain people will be mad enough to vote him/her out.  Plus, if there is an option that any vote by anyone is shown to the public, then the false accusers could be punished, or the drugger could vote him/her back for spreading fabrications about him/her.

2. If by any chance the drugger does receive unfair vote counters, a battle mod will be summoned, check his activity, satisfy him/herself that there is no illegal activity going on, and simply leave.

 

And last, how will the potential problems for this be any worse than the current system, which allows people to vote anyone anyway?

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

I never encountered any bug while using it, it works fine. There are simply not enough battle moderators to check every successfull report.

 

That's what I meant when I said it never works.  To "work", a moderator has to come to the battle and ban the mult.

 

As for wasting time with trolls, what's the difference with the current system? Clearly you didn't read my last sentences.  UNDER the CURRENT SYSTEM, people can still /vote anyone, regardless of their actual behavior, and mods will still waste their time.  

To be clear:  this system would keep tabs on all the "genuine" mults, so moderators would only waste their time with people who have a sizeable amount of counters.  This would actually make the system more efficient and moderators would waste LESS time with false alarms.

[Tani_S 736]

Well, I know the number of players using it, is really low. But I think, if there are made some tweaks to let it perform better (& showing it to the player that it is working) and if all voting is publicly seen, then there will more people using it.

 

But the bottleneck is still the battle moderator thing, the system is still very limited, if the players cannot decide themselves (tho restricted by a set of rule mentioned here and at the kick2 thread).

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

A player based system would be best. Kick 2.0 is around for 2 years, has about 400 likes and is pretty mature. But obviously it is not favoured by the Dev's (edit: which is actually a shame)

 

 

So we just have a way to supports the low number of battle mod's in their job.

 

 

Some figures on /vote's

 

 

If you take a look at the battle mod report video, they claim that 4000+ /votes have been used (dublices obviously cleared). I cant tell if:

- the command was used _by_ 4000+ players

- or if it was used _on/vs_ 4000+ players

Even if "only" 4000 players used it, it means that a serious number of mults can be taken out of business.

 

 

Let's support the battle mods in their work.. by this little bit of coding work.

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

The amount of people /vote ing will rise if they know that their action actually gets results.

[r_I_already_won0 2,339]

Thousands of players still think admins drop the Gold Box.

I know...I've stopped telling them that admin doesn't drop gold..because then I would spend most of my battle time in the chat. Even when I play with ranks around Brigadier, lots of players still think admin drops the gold.  Quite depressing.

[I3ANNED 1,693]

I would love to see this implemented. With a team of 25+ battle mods the /vote command is still practically useless...

[Yele 3,982]

This idea reminds me teamkick and i think is bad for the reasons that brought to elimination of teamkick - voted players for 1000 reasons and only a small part of them they were violating the rules of the game.

The players have the comand/vote but they don't use it, if you don't see

 it means your battle is not there, the reason that we don't go in battle voted is because of this - if 1-2 players used / vote but their vote is not enough to the battle automatically becomes reported it looks like we ignore the help requests but we don't see it,  obviously the priority is to help the players that voted right.

We watch more then 1000 voted battles per weeks, now we can see all the voted battles, we re testing a new tool for moderators

we are working on a new way to go in battle - matchmaking that should solve the most part of problems of sabotage

[Yele 3,982]

 

 

that should solve the most part of problems of sabotage

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

 

This idea reminds me teamkick and i think is bad for the reasons that brought to elimination of teamkick - voted players for 1000 reasons and only a small part of them they were violating the rules of the game.

 

The old Kick system gave the power in the hands of the players without usefull rules to prevent fraud.

The thing that I propose here is completely different.

 

 

• The votes are just counted and wear off rather slow. So if a player gets voted again and again and again ( = a mult), then you will see it in this counter. Even if not half of the team votes, and therefore the complaint is not sent, then the counter will grow for mults way more then for randomly voted players.
• But whatever the counter is, there is no automatical kick. It is still the battle mod who is in command.

 

 

 

Will the matchmaking make the manual selection of battles obsolete? I guess not.

So then we have "todays" situation on manual battles, where mults are still a large problem.

 

If Tanki would implement this proposed system then the BattleMods would gain a usefull indication on mults.

If the current problem is that the players use the "/vote" too less, then you can ask the vLog team to make a video about it - and about it's corret useage.

 

 

 

ps:

And.. please don't get me wrong: it is not about [me] and [myyyyy] idea. I just want a solution for a long existing problem.

Therefore I thank you very much, that you took your time and came here, as your input is needed to design such a thing.

 

I truely apriciate that the battle mods have the results that they have now.. but the teamsize is simply to small to be effective. Thats a main reason why players don't trust into the vote command any more.

A little more technology supporting them could make the existing team so much more effective.

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

The command itself is just too much messing around for most people and how to do it hasn't been explained to them...

 

 

• Press TAB
• click on cheaters name
• click copy name
• type /vote in to chat (with a space after the vote text)
• paste cheaters name into chat

But because it hasn't been explained, some guys are probably spending so much time messing around trying to type in /vote and usernames like 55378008 or 1_ M_A_C_H_E_A_T_3_R, that they effectively become mults themselves while they're figuring it out..

 

 

 

 

What about this:

 

 

 

Listing invalid reasons helps the players to learn to differnentiate what behaviour is against the rules and which not. Clickin on those invalid reasons _is_ possible, but it does not produce a valid vote - it will just give an explanation why this is an invalid reason (>> and therefore relieve the battle mods).

I assume 99.5% of the players never read the rules, so having them learn the rules in-game is most usefull.

 

 

• [Kills me all the time]     gives an explanation like:

  "Sorry that you face such a strong opponent. Beeing able to kill other tankers more often is not considered as sabotagte, because killing other tanks is part of the game. Maybe consider playing battles with lower ranks in the meanwhile. "

 

 

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

My sarcasm detector seems broken because I can't tell if "Invalid Reasons" is a joke or an actual part of your idea... :huh:

fixed with explanation ;)

edit: fixed with new pic ;) ;)

[BlackWasp777 4,498]

:D :D :D :D   - loving the "goldbox plz Admin" add on xD

 

Well it has no direct impact on it's own - it is more part of a combo:

 

 

We face this issues:

• too less players use vote
• lot of the votes are because of invalid reasons
• the /vote command is nasty to hande; especially for new players or vs. players with complex names
• players learned that /voting is less usefull and therefore stopped using it

 

 

Therefore I propose a set of those 3 messures:

• change the mini-menu
  to make the reports easier and reduce the number of wrong votes
• advertise that in the vLog
  to give it a jump start and give the players new hope using it
• introduce the [vote_counter]
  to increase battle mod efficiency and spot true mults easier over the time; while this does not necessarily has to be told in the vLog

 

 

Those 3 measures should do the job, and help to reach those targets:

• getting more people into the corret usage of reports/votes
• supporting battle mods efficiently (by [vote_counter])
• increase the chances that they get banned from the game for long times
• and so making mults lifes way harder

 

 

I doubt that we could ever kill mults from this game once and for all - people are creative. But achieving the above goals would help the players so much.