[SPOILERS] PB20 Lurker Thread of Perfect Hindsight

[MJW (ya that one)]

There are very simple reasons why people still play with LP. For starters LP beat Sullla (I agree with you Krill that doesn't mean much but other people think so) so he is one of the best players. This causes a problem if you want to blackball him as people cannot take seriously a game without one of the best players. A good example is no-one caring about ICGA after DQing Rybka and not allowing Houdini and Stockfish.

This is a laughable analogy. No game on RB has all the best players. Clearly no game can be taken seriously then.

Seriously? I'm not talking about a single game. I'm talking about systematically blackballing LP. If that happens every single game he would want to play in would have a bit of an asterisks attached to the winner because he didn't have to beat LP. The Rybka example shows that lurkers really don't care about you being a bad boy if your better than everyone else and just saying you don't want to play with someone because he's mean wouldn't cut it. You are forced go much farther and make implicit personal attacks.

[MJW (ya that one)]

While your second point is correct in explaining why he gets in games, MJW, your first point is the most inane thing I've read in a while.

If we believe someone is a serial cheater - their accomplishments, regardless of how impressive or not are completely irrelevant and have no bearing on how "serious" a competition any game is. Was the Tour de France somehow "not serious" because Lance Armstrong wasn't in it, etc etc etc.

Not to mention, I'm not entirely sure too many people take these games seriously in the way you're suggesting. While all the players want to win and some try very hard to accomplish that, there isn't an official ladder or HALL OF CHAMPIONS or something. I doubt too many people could tell you who has won the most games and how many that is, etc.

And lastly, this wasn't really supposed to be a super-serious game to begin with. The primary purpose was to give a more rigorous test to the ToW mod.

Oh you misread my Rybka statement. People didn't care about the ICGA AFTER they stopped Rybka and the others from playing. The engines that cheated were 500+ rating points stronger and that made the ICGA competition not matter anymore.

I don't think LP doesn't take a game seriously... and he has joined many other games.

[NobleHelium]

Yes, so in this case the Tour De France no longer matters because they've stopped Armstrong from competing. Actually all of cycling no longer matters. The Olympics also don't matter because they ban cheaters there too. If you say so, MJW. I assure you that Gaspar didn't misread anything.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Yes, so in this case the Tour De France no longer matters because they've stopped Armstrong from competing. If you say so, MJW. I assure you that Gaspar didn't misread anything.

Video games/chess and the Tour De France are very different. On the surface it is not possible to set up a drugs-allowed Tour de France for obvious reasons but you can in chess. It goes deeper than that though. The Rybka cheaters didn't have to give up anything to win. So even if they cheat they are still "better". Also the version that ICGA banned (Rybka was retroactively perma-banned) is no longer the current version so there's not excuse for not letting it back in. ICGA cannot compete with a tournament 100+ ratings points higher just because the engines steal code from eachother. On the other hand the Tour de France cheaters had to hurt themselves using steroids. They were only "better" because they were willing to hurt themselves and not because they were better athletes. Steroids are also viewed like a plague just for being steroids. This allowed the cycling federation to blackball Armstrong and make people view him as not a real player. Lastly, the cycling federation has resources to screw you over while RB and ICGA have nothing.

In summary I think people care about both results and cheating. Tour de France doesn't have to compete with anyone else and steroids being present add cheap heat. ICGA gets creamed by the competition (TCEC) and most people don't even understand, much less care about, Rybka's cheating. And video games are much closer to chess than the tour de france.

My argument is probably bad for other reasons but comparing ICGA losing to Rybka the Cycling Federation winning against Armstrong is bad too.

[NobleHelium]

Okay? Sure? You and Parkin are welcome to set up a cheating-allowed RB. The door is that way. -->

[Gaspar]

I literally have no idea what the fuck an ICHA or a Rybka are - and I think that's your issue. RB MP is not a competitive endeavor in line with, say, tournament Hearthstone/League of Legends/etc where there are prizes and professional players, etc. We're a bunch of dudes (and a few ladies) who like to play <insert game here, though obviously Civ4 is the most popular of them> and like to have a friendly competition against similarly minded dudes (and a few ladies.) So we set expectations and the very first expectation set on this website is to "steadfastly avoid cheating." If that's not your bag - go play somewhere else, period. By your logic every game that didn't have Mackoti or Seven in it "couldn't be taken seriously." Should we therefore force the two of them to sign up for every game? Is it okay if Krill plays instead of Seven? Where do we draw the line? If novice doesn't play is it not a game? Plako? Noble? The Black Sword?

Who gives a fuck besides you is the real question.

[NobleHelium]

I think I finally understand your post now. You are saying the chess engines were banned for "stealing code" which I think means they reused strategies or methods developed by other engines. So when they were banned despite being superior the tournament was viewed as no longer viable. You know what the equivalent thing for Civ4 would be? Banning the use of strategies developed by someone else. You know that groundbreaking game novice/Seven played in PBEM23? I and many others have copied the shit out of it. It is now pretty much standard to use Pacifism in your first golden age and pump out several GPs. We did that in 38, 45, PB12. Is copying Seven's strategy banned? No.

The equivalent thing to banning cheating on RB in computerized chess would be banning engines that hack into other engines such that they can't operate, engines that don't follow the chess rules and move their pawns like rooks, or engines that collude with other engines to trade games when that is strategically beneficial.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Okay I've slept and my argument is wrong for a different reason: Only five good players or so can plausibly get blackballed from RB and that's not enough for anything. For an example where it is enough CFC/CivPlayers blackballs a good chuck of the community and that damages their reputation. You can only kick out so many people before you start paying a price but we are not even close to that.

This now doesn't matter but I will explain the situation.

Rybka was (before it got rewritten) basically a copy of a program called Fruit. Fruit was open-sourced so the real crime was not listing Fruit's writer as co-author as you have to under the rules and open-source. Most of the time when you copy you have to crack the program too, but not for Fruit. Ironically Rybka got caught when the author called out other program that copied Rybka. That program was opened sourced so people were able to look at the code and notice it was basically Fruit. Rybka didn't just steel ideas (which is normal. ICGA doesn't like it but has no way of stopping it) but it was a direct copy with a few changes. Steeling code gave the author of Rybka a huge advantage by being able to bypass the first couple of years of writing a chess engine. Also the attention allowed to snowball ahead by being able to bring in other people like Larry Kaufman who re-wrote it. So perma-banning him is respectable.

So Rybka plagiarized and would have had to pirate under normal circumstances code not just borrowed ideas.

Edit: I remember that ICGA does acknowledge borrowing code even if they don't like it. I remember the official report where Rybka copied 95% of fruit while the next highest program was at 10%.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I don't think the argument for banning specific players from games has anything to do with the quality of the remaining players in the RB pool or whether there is a sufficient number of "quality" players remaining in that pool before some sort of imagined external critical mass wherein apparently our games are rendered meaningless by the absence of "quality" players is achieved. I mean, wut?

The question is and ought to be whether any given player's continuing presence in these recreational (we play for fun, right?) competitions is good for both the players competing against each other and for the competition itself. The health of the competition itself only matters insofar as it is able to facilitate the recreational goals of the players.

I think it is safe to assume that most people play games for fun. Most people also like to win. The problem comes when having fun is indistinguishable from winning for anyone participating in a purely recreational pursuit. If a player proceeds in a no holds barred manner despite numerous complaints or criticisms of others who are playing within agreed upon conditions (rules), in a game intended solely for fun, the primary goal of participating in the competition has been undermined for those players. The game ceases for many to be fun when an actor repeatedly and habitually exceeds whatever rules provide guidance for the game's competitors. Ultimately, this ruins the fun of participating and only the fear of letting down other players may compel further participation.

Put another way, I can play Civ for fun, or I can watch TV. When civ pisses me off, Law and Order won't and I'll take my recreation time elsewhere. Cheating is bad for the community. It creates frustration and animosity where there should be recreation and enjoyment. Why play games just to be frustrated by a bad actor? Better for those who enjoy a good game to exclude those who would ruin the fun. This has nothing to do with how many good players are left. Regardless of how good a player is, the game is better off without that player if that player cannot compete within the limits of the rules of fair play.

[MJW (ya that one)]

My point was you can get overly aggressive kicking out people. CFC does that. But we are not even close to that point were it causes real damage. RB has already kick out people like the person who gave a settler to Plako and that didn't hurt. So my point doesn't work without having to get into issues like what is "fair play".