Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

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Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by KennetRP »

I was playing a game of 1v1 against EWBJ with Mona, Prof. NOOB (Gnooty), COLM_BECKHAM and (((colm..will))) (a.k.a. Wilparra) observing.

Mona claims Wilparra helped EWBJ in the chat by typing "cc" right after EWBJ destroyed one of my City Centers, EWBJ proceeds to build City Center, though it is possible EWBJ planned to do this regardless of Wilparra mentioning it in the chat. But not long after this Wilparra types "EWBJ more artilleria" (this last chat message I was able to see). These two messages are confirmed by the chatlog, which I will leave you a screenshot of.

If EWBJ was a newbie to the game, I wouldn't bother making this report as helping/giving tips to newbies is fair game so they can learn how to play, but EWBJ knows how to play. It has to be said that this is the first time to my knowledge that Wilparra has helped a player from obs chat, so I would only suggest a very mild punishment.

Link to full chatlog:
https://patch.ee2.eu/patch15/PlaybacksC ... gq8EE7ymVf
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Dr.MonaLisa »

I can confirm it, with some additional information.

EWBJ has destroyed Kennet's City Center, and none of them (no EWBJ nor Kennet) started rebuilding it for over 30 seconds.

Then wilparra wrote on chat: "cc", and EWBJ started building the City Center (construction site underground place has appeared after wilparra's message). Kennet did not start it, therefore I think the message was sent privately to EWBJ.

I personally wouldn't treat messages like "MORE artillery" as a serious help (it can be considered as giving tips which help players to improve), but a situation with bringing attention to build the City Center is a huge game changer. I have seen that nobody is building a city center, but I did not send any "citycenter" taunt or anything related to it, because I know that it would be unfair for any of these players.

Not to get wrongly understood:
- Giving tips to players is fine, because they can improve this way. For example I told Kennet earlier to explore a technology.
- Telling players about idle citizens or not enough citizens at some resources in my opinion is fine too.
- Telling players to build more houses is fine too.
All this gives a chance that players will remember to do these things in the future and improve their gameplay. I know that it's good, because I was giving tips very often to Kennet, and during 1 year he improved a lot, and follows these tips himself (I don't longer need to text everything).

However, there are "game changing" messages that can decide about player's victory. Especially when we consider the fact that Kennet was Mayan civilization (or something from that region) and could have converted enemy's units near the city center if was built. Therefore wilparra notifying only 1 player that there's missing city center was a huge impact on game result.

That's just my opinion. We don't have any writing rules for that, and the Observers-to-players chat is disabled in rated games, so I wouldn't treat it as something serious. A small warning, temporary feature block wouldn't hurt though.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by KennetRP »

I agree with what you've said, especially regarding gamechanging chat messages.

Perhaps I jumped the gun too fast by taking issue with "EWBJ MORE artilleria" as it wasn't a gamechanging message in this specific case, I was already losing at that point, but it can be gamechanging in certain scenarios.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Gnoo »

It seems like the border of where allowed „teaching“ ends and
forbidden "help" begins is hard to define and hasn't been fully discussed.
So thanks Kennet for improving the awareness about the complicated subject
of interference by observers „helping“ players.

I was observing that game and would claim that at the time of "Wilp's help" no hint what so ever
would have been able to change the deadly outcome for you, anymore.
Maybe EWBJ was at first simply too lazy to steal your terr because he knew that he would win anyway?

Obviously you anyhow think that the allowed line was crossed by "Wilparra" here?
Then why „Mona“ didn't cross it when "hinting" you to "explore (a specific) tech"
during the same game a little earlier?
You have become quite a strong player and I think even "small hints" like that
can be considered a possible game changer, too,
and therefore also be unfair for the other player (EWBJ in this case).

That's where the dilemma begins as you could only become as good
by receiving many small of such "learning by doing hints" during running games of the past.
That's why I think it should only be prohibited to spill information about the weak points of an opponent,
but helping to improve the gameplay abillities shouldn't be limited if visible for ALL.
If the other player thinks it would ruin his game he could set rules & say „No helping allowed!“.
Either before the game starts or while noticing those hints during the game.
The only problem is that it's hard to prove if an observer talked to all or not after the game is over.

If I understood correctly - for „Mona“ and you (Kennet) the line of forbidden and allowed "hints"
shifts in relation to the skills of the respective player.
EWBJ also is a good player, but maybe is still able to improve by „remindings“
such as not to forget claiming terr's from the opponent as soon as possible,
as pro players would ALWAYS be doing without any hints,
just like you are able to improve by reminders of proper researchings.
It seems pretty subjective, when a player is pro enough to prohibit certain "helpings".

But let's pretend that WILPARRA crossed a line here and argue from there:

Mona was foresighted enough to tell you to collect evidence by making a screenshot during the running game,
which would have been needed to prove that "Wilparra" was writing to EWBJ only(!)
and exclude the possibility that you simply overlooked his message during the struggle of your last battle for survival.

So where is this proof?
Until proven otherwise,
or confessed by „Wilpy“ "the [lagging] god of EE2 with ultra [outpost] instinto" himself,
I would prefer to believe that "Wilpy" was writing to ALL,
while mainly intending to talk to another spanish speaking observer named "Alex".
As your screenshot shows, „Wilpy“ even stated during the game:
"yo hablo con alex" ("I talk to Alex")
Which makes sense as he was talking in Spanish the whole previous time and EWBJ doesn't speak Spanish:
longer screenshot.jpg
longer screenshot.jpg (40.48 KiB) Viewed 1751 times
Unfortunately „cc“ can be universally understood in the game and after he was accused of helping EWBJ,
„Will“ obviously tried to trigger a bit by for all visibly writing „EWBJ MORE artilleria“.

Even if "Wilp" was sending his "help" to ALL it's not the best thing to do by your definition of forbidden „help“,
but it would mean that his "cc help" was at least not one-sided and that both players could have reacted to it.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Dr.MonaLisa »

The essence of the Observers-to-players feature is to actually provide help to "new" and maybe unexpectedly unskilled players. I was spreading a gossip that I added this feature because I had to bully players who were giving me headaches, but hopefully everyone understood the joke.

This feature is very controversial (and that's expected), but it has done a lot of good things during the past years. So I hope we don't need any debate regarding the usefulness of this feature.

I still would separate the "game changing" help, from the actual "tips that help to win".

I don't want to focus on this part:
~eW`~>♔Dr.MonaLisa : explore tech that allows you to put more into univs and temples
Because I used to provide a really game changing tips from time to time (in other games). I'm not saint myself so I won't pretend to be one. However, by the generic analysis, in the CURRENT report the message sent by me was not really significant. Let's do not forget that I didn't tell Kennet to build temples (I didn't have to, I used to tell it to him when he was a worse player few months ago, and he simply learnt it). When I sent the message about the technology, EWBJ was already 2 epochs (or maybe 1.XX) ahead of Kennet. So my message was an attempt to balance it. Faster technology gathering has effects after many minutes, so I personally wouldn't consider it as a game changing tip if I was verifying a report file like this myself.

The story with "cc" is a bit different, as it seemed to me like this message was only sent to 1 player. Otherwise it's hard to explain that Kennet did not start building the City Center after wilparra's message. Normally he is checking the messages frequently for tips for himself (witch27).
The self-claimed territory gives the population, territory based bonuses for army, etc. All these effects can be gathered in a very short time. So for me it is a "game changing" thing. But I agree that no further actions should be done since Kennet failed to make a screenshot that would prove that the message was not sent to all players. This is disappointing because I literally guided him to do it.

If somebody missed it, there's a little different discussion about the Observers-to-players feature: viewtopic.php?p=24031#p24031
(with the actual punishment issued).
[...] but helping to improve the gameplay abillities shouldn't be limited if visible for ALL.
This is also debatable. I personally would find it annoying to read "learning tips" directed to other players. I think it's nothing wrong to text players directly, especially when we have a simple-in-use playbacks converter.

One thing is sure: I have made a very risky decision for this feature to be available for all players. Initially, in the first version of this feature observers were only allowed to read messages from players, not send messages. This was changed later by the "trust" to players. I was also aware that we might be getting more reports like this. I don't know why I wrote (this) last paragraph, needed some summary but nothing else fits, so leaving it to make my post look longer.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Matty »

Hello,
Actually Gnooty summed it up very very well.
The line is indeed not very clear and that's because it depends on more factors.
Even though the case is already ended for the already stated reasons I'd like to semplify the whole thing...

Giving tips to make a player improve himself is a thing, giving tips to make a player win is another thing.
First one is legit and well accepted (in unranked games), second one is not really nice and might be reportable depending on the entity of the help.
Notice that by this definition the same help like "cc" can be interpreted in both ways, but its interpretation "probability" changes depending on the player's level. Why?
Because saying "cc" to a great player like Mona won't improve him that much as a player. He perfectly knows the importance of it and if he forgot to build the cc it would be much more a matter of forgetting/not realizing rather than not giving the right importance to that. That's why in this case the tip would most likely have the goal to help him win the game. The same might not apply to other players though.

Even though a lot of tips can be interpreted in both ways, It's interesting to notice that some tips can only be interpreted as ways to favor a playre, and that's why they are not accepted. Let's make an example:
Player A sends a ram to player B. Observer flares the ram or suggests its position to player B who cannot really see or deduce ram's position.
In this case the tip cannot have the goal of improving anyone. That information about ram's position cannot be retrieved by construction and thus it can be only seen as a way to favor player B in this case.

Of course there are other things to consider: if a certain player for example asked previously to not give any tips during the game, even if unranked that's how it should go, unless there is a higher number of players (not observers) who explicitly dissociate from that player's request.
In other words, observers should not give any tips at all if they know they are going to ruin players' experience.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Dr.MonaLisa »

Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00 Notice that by this definition the same help like "cc" can be interpreted in both ways, but its interpretation "probability" changes depending on the player's level. Why?
Because saying "cc" to a great player like Mona won't improve him that much as a player. He perfectly knows the importance of it and if he forgot to build the cc it would be much more a matter of forgetting/not realizing rather than not giving the right importance to that. That's why in this case the tip would most likely have the goal to help him win the game. The same might not apply to other players though.
I like to be in examples :)

However, in this case it was a bit more complicated. I am not going to waste time to make screenshots that Kennet failed to provide in his report, but I'll try to describe it:

- EWBJ was killing Kennet's City Center with catapults. Kennet was Mayan and could activate the civ power at any time (not sure about recharge time at that moment).
- The City Center was destroyed, but no EWBJ nor Kennet noticed it. Or maybe they noticed it, but had not enough resources to build.
- My blood pressure was growing seeing that nobody builds the city center, but I kept calm and didn't yell, waiting to see who will be smarter.
- After around 30 seconds, wilparra writes on chat: "cc", and EWBJ starts building it, Kennet doesn't. There is a suspicion that wilparra sent this message only to EWBJ. The whole fun and competition gets ruined by wilparra. It's like the Santa Claus who's taking his beard off on Christmas day while children are watching it.

Considering the facts that Kennet could have used his civ power to convert units if his city-center was rebuilt, I would treat it as a huge help. But how will we prove that wilparras message was not sent to All? Theoretically the chat system could be improved in the future to show who is recipient of sent messages (using the functions that workaround nicknames in Playbacks), but that's again a lot of things to develop for such a minor and rarely occurring issues...
Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00 Let's make an example:
Player A sends a ram to player B. Observer flares the ram or suggests its position to player B who cannot really see or deduce ram's position.
In this case the tip cannot have the goal of improving anyone. That information about ram's position cannot be retrieved by construction and thus it can be only seen as a way to favor player B in this case.
Funny example. Especially when I often do this. With a little exception that the rams I signal don't exist, and I get satisfaction from trolling players who move army to signaled positions.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Matty »

Dr.MonaLisa wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 10:33
Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00 Notice that by this definition the same help like "cc" can be interpreted in both ways, but its interpretation "probability" changes depending on the player's level. Why?
Because saying "cc" to a great player like Mona won't improve him that much as a player. He perfectly knows the importance of it and if he forgot to build the cc it would be much more a matter of forgetting/not realizing rather than not giving the right importance to that. That's why in this case the tip would most likely have the goal to help him win the game. The same might not apply to other players though.
I like to be in examples :)

However, in this case it was a bit more complicated. I am not going to waste time to make screenshots that Kennet failed to provide in his report, but I'll try to describe it:

- EWBJ was killing Kennet's City Center with catapults. Kennet was Mayan and could activate the civ power at any time (not sure about recharge time at that moment).
- The City Center was destroyed, but no EWBJ nor Kennet noticed it. Or maybe they noticed it, but had not enough resources to build.
- My blood pressure was growing seeing that nobody builds the city center, but I kept calm and didn't yell, waiting to see who will be smarter.
- After around 30 seconds, wilparra writes on chat: "cc", and EWBJ starts building it, Kennet doesn't. There is a suspicion that wilparra sent this message only to EWBJ. The whole fun and competition gets ruined by wilparra. It's like the Santa Claus who's taking his beard off on Christmas day while children are watching it.

Considering the facts that Kennet could have used his civ power to convert units if his city-center was rebuilt, I would treat it as a huge help. But how will we prove that wilparras message was not sent to All? Theoretically the chat system could be improved in the future to show who is recipient of sent messages (using the functions that workaround nicknames in Playbacks), but that's again a lot of things to develop for such a minor and rarely occurring issues...
Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00 Let's make an example:
Player A sends a ram to player B. Observer flares the ram or suggests its position to player B who cannot really see or deduce ram's position.
In this case the tip cannot have the goal of improving anyone. That information about ram's position cannot be retrieved by construction and thus it can be only seen as a way to favor player B in this case.
Funny example. Especially when I often do this. With a little exception that the rams I signal don't exist, and I get satisfaction from trolling players who move army to signaled positions.
I agree that writing "cc" just to EWBJ would have been bad and it would have been considered as a way to favor a certain player. If that wasn's the case, why would he write "cc" to just one player?

But even assuming that tip was made to favor one player we should also evaluate its entity in relation with its context. I don't know how much good Kennet and EWJB got but some months ago, with all my respect, there were a lot of things that didn't work and a help like that hardly could become that relevant for them.

Even though helping to favor a player is not that nice for his opponent, it is still a way for for observers to entertain themselves helping their friend and showing their support, or maybe just to "show off" their knowledge to the detriment of one of the players. That's why I don't think it is right to remove this component completely.
But yeah... of course tips that compromise the game ruining it are not accepted.
Last edited by Matty on 19 Nov 2021, 23:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by KennetRP »

Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00

Even though a lot of tips can be interpreted in both ways, It's interesting to notice that some tips can only be interpreted as ways to favor a playre, and that's why they are not accepted. Let's make an example:
Player A sends a ram to player B. Observer flares the ram or suggests its position to player B who cannot really see or deduce ram's position.
In this case the tip cannot have the goal of improving anyone. That information about ram's position cannot be retrieved by construction and thus it can be only seen as a way to favor player B in this case.
Interesting example, but probably not the best considering rams are banned in most games. A couple of days ago, I played 1v1 versus an old player who just returned and he started employing rams, despite typing "yes rules" in chat shortly after game start. BilgeKagan warned me of this in chat thankfully, so I was prepared (though my opponent managed to destroy a couple of my buildings, including a city center). I chose not to report this "new" old player because he's an old player who probably was not used to rules games being the default, and possibly did not see my chat message (I don't recall if I typed "yes rules" in ALL chat or not).
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Re: Reporting player (((colm..will))) for seemingly helping my opponent from obs

Post by Matty »

KennetRP wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 23:56
Matty wrote: 19 Nov 2021, 04:00

Even though a lot of tips can be interpreted in both ways, It's interesting to notice that some tips can only be interpreted as ways to favor a playre, and that's why they are not accepted. Let's make an example:
Player A sends a ram to player B. Observer flares the ram or suggests its position to player B who cannot really see or deduce ram's position.
In this case the tip cannot have the goal of improving anyone. That information about ram's position cannot be retrieved by construction and thus it can be only seen as a way to favor player B in this case.
Interesting example, but probably not the best considering rams are banned in most games. A couple of days ago, I played 1v1 versus an old player who just returned and he started employing rams, despite typing "yes rules" in chat shortly after game start. BilgeKagan warned me of this in chat thankfully, so I was prepared (though my opponent managed to destroy a couple of my buildings, including a city center). I chose not to report this "new" old player because he's an old player who probably was not used to rules games being the default, and possibly did not see my chat message (I don't recall if I typed "yes rules" in ALL chat or not).
You did the right choice, and your example actually explains how many factors there are and why common sense must always be used to manage these exceptions.
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