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Trock

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Aug 29th 2010, 15:44:27

How come you delete people working together on Primary server. Saying it constitutes as cheating, but you don't delete teams working together on the team server.

Why do you have a difference on policies from one server to another?

Pain Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 15:46:46

this is a stupid question. there are no rules about teams working together, its just the same as alliances working together.
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Requiem Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 16:04:29

Pain, its not a completely a stupid question. I know where he is going with it. And yes the original intent of the creators were to have a bunch of 5 man teams duke it out however they cannot control how the community will play. As it stands it's going to be whoever has the most countries can enforce whatever they want which is identical to Alliance.

The vision was to have different game play than alliance, and in a lot of respects that is the case.

But I think the country list tells the story... Only 100+ countries... You make your own assumptions.
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Trock

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:03:40

The moderators have made a clear stance atleast in Primary that clan like behaviour is prohibited. Backing this up with deletions of countries.

I don't see how teams working together here is any different.

gwagers Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:10:03

I think they would be more strict with the letter of the rules if they had created the Team server from whole cloth. As it is, they warped what was at the time 1a, and caught a bunch of clans in the middle. Removing all of those larger-than-five-member clans would have cut the server's player base down considerably, at least at that time.

With the numbers as they are now, that might no longer be the case, but considering that tags have worked as they currently do without real interference for at least four resets since then, cracking down now would probably lead to riots on the boards.
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snawdog Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:15:14

Originally posted by gwagers:
I think they would be more strict with the letter of the rules if they had created the Team server from whole cloth. As it is, they warped what was at the time 1a, and caught a bunch of clans in the middle. Removing all of those larger-than-five-member clans would have cut the server's player base down considerably, at least at that time.

With the numbers as they are now, that might no longer be the case, but considering that tags have worked as they currently do without real interference for at least four resets since then, cracking down now would probably lead to riots on the boards.


And that is a reason to maintain a server with 100 players and dropping?
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Slagpit Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:18:00

The short answer is "politics". It's also very difficult to judge the intention of alliances when some of them don't even post on the boards.

gwagers Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:20:56

Originally posted by snawdog:
Originally posted by gwagers:
I think they would be more strict with the letter of the rules if they had created the Team server from whole cloth. As it is, they warped what was at the time 1a, and caught a bunch of clans in the middle. Removing all of those larger-than-five-member clans would have cut the server's player base down considerably, at least at that time.

With the numbers as they are now, that might no longer be the case, but considering that tags have worked as they currently do without real interference for at least four resets since then, cracking down now would probably lead to riots on the boards.


And that is a reason to maintain a server with 100 players and dropping?


That wasn't the question. The question was, "Why is this policy allowed?" not "Why is this server still operating?"
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Trock

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:28:01

well atleast I have no problems judging the intentions of RD. Their violation of 5 mans per tag is pretty obvious.

Scurd

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:29:17

Originally posted by Slagpit:
The short answer is "politics". It's also very difficult to judge the intention of alliances when some of them don't even post on the boards.



not many people post their intentions on the primary board either

snawdog Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:30:24

Originally posted by gwagers:
Originally posted by snawdog:
Originally posted by gwagers:
I think they would be more strict with the letter of the rules if they had created the Team server from whole cloth. As it is, they warped what was at the time 1a, and caught a bunch of clans in the middle. Removing all of those larger-than-five-member clans would have cut the server's player base down considerably, at least at that time.

With the numbers as they are now, that might no longer be the case, but considering that tags have worked as they currently do without real interference for at least four resets since then, cracking down now would probably lead to riots on the boards.


And that is a reason to maintain a server with 100 players and dropping?


That wasn't the question. The question was, "Why is this policy allowed?" not "Why is this server still operating?"


Yea, i know.I was just asking a bigger question,as the question asked by Trock has been asked since that type of play started,with no answer.
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Trock

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:33:02

To quote what you said to people in primary. RD's behaviour goes well beyond the "Spirit of the rules" you seem to talk about.

"Spirit of the rules
Players should strive to play according to the spirit of the rules, especially on servers without clans. These servers are designed for individual play. To make the game fair for all players and accessible to new players, players in the primary, express, and tourney server should not engage in any outside of game organizing which gives them an advantage over what can be accomplished through normal, ingame diplomacy. Warnings will be issued to countries suspected of breaking this rule, and in extreme cases, the offending countries may be deleted."

As stated in the rule, we are very hesitant to delete countries for this reason. In your case, you teamed up against four different countries, often for reasons as trivial as a few landgrabs. You responded intended for other players yet never felt a need to message each other. Several of you have been warned about this type of behavior in the past. The warnings don't seem to have had any effect.

It is very simple to play the primary server while not acting as a clan. If you cannot do that, I suggest playing another server instead. You have five countries who want to play together? Try the team server.

-Slagpit"

warlorde Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:41:15

LMAO

MrCrimson Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:50:41

Interesting how people complain about teams working together, specifically RD when you were all doing it before us. The ones fluffing are the ones that got fed their own bullfluff.

Slagpit Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:51:20

So what exactly is this thread? Whining because you got deleted on primary or whining because RD is too good for any of you to do anything about?

gwagers Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 17:59:15

I note that the "spirit of the rules" argument has been used successfully only when backed up by war results, at least on this server. Otherwise RD would not be the only clan that played as though this were 1a Version 2.
Peloponnese (PEHL-oh-puh-NEES): a mythical land of cheesecake

"We cannot enter into alliance with neighboring princes until we are acquainted with their designs..."--Sun Tzu

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Trock

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Aug 29th 2010, 18:39:31

Those players don't really have anything to do with me. I just happen to have guest access to the clans boxcar site and I don't even play team or primary.

I'm asking why does RD get to break the spirit of the rules. You have deleted people for this violation on other servers. I personally think they should have been deleted for the things they did. I'm just asking that you are consistent with your deletion policy.

And as it is a ingame policy issue argument. Well clearly it is not a policy issue that you can sign only 5 people per tag. To me this seems like an ingame design feature. And If you look at the number of countries this set in team 157 this set and 463 in january. 2/3 of the players have voted with their legs.

Also I see the allowed excistance of RD in its current form as a lapse in game moderation and a gateway into more dirty playing being brought into the game. Bots performing tag kills on certain alliances is something I wish will not return into the game for example.



@gwagers moderators have applied the spirit of the rules argument with country deletions in primary. Why wouldn't moderators do this in team? The server clearly needs it.

MrCrimson Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 18:46:15

Trock your post makes you look like an idiot. Learn to read and understand. RD hasn't done anything that 90% of the server was already doing in playing with teams.
So using your idea you'd have to delete the entire server.
Either that or your posts were indeed just a whiny fluff complaining about a group that has beaten a select few idiots that tried to pick a fight with us.

Trock

Member
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Aug 29th 2010, 18:50:52

MrCrimson why the need to use kindergarten suitable language?

braden Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 18:51:34

he reads at a fourth grade level.

Vic Rattlehead Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 19:26:35

Crimson, NE has never had any cross-team cooperation of any kind and I take exception to being painted with your broad brush. I am on this server for the five man team experience. You have gone out of your way to negate that experience. Thus, you suck. I don't think we'll still be here past next set without some changes, thus we will also be "voting with our legs."

I still like the idea Sexy CX floated months ago, combine the team concept with the tourney concept and really create something new. The best teams advance through the levels, and people can't dominate the whole server by having 30 countries.
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MrCrimson Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 19:44:02

Jesus, so many people can't read.
Had you read Vic you'd have noticed that if what you say is true then you are not in the 90%...

warlorde Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 20:42:28

Originally posted by MrCrimson:
Jesus, so many people can't read.
Had you read Vic you'd have noticed that if what you say is true then you are not in the 90%...


the problem here is not literacy, the problem is your math. soon it will be 90% because RD will push others out of the server. the point he is trying to make is that a 5 man team playing legit has no power in this server. we are just here to live as RD sees fit. if we anoy the or if we are good at taking retals they kill us. so because you have 30 players vs 5 you are now skilled players? bull fluff

i read previously that the moderators are in RD... this would make sense why they are not deleting RD countries. i dont really know if thats true or not bu when i read comments like Slag's i begin to think it is true

Slagpit Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 21:39:22

redacted

Edited By: Slagpit on Aug 30th 2010, 3:13:50
See Original Post

gwagers Game profile

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Aug 29th 2010, 22:47:52

Originally posted by Trock:
And as it is a ingame policy issue argument. Well clearly it is not a policy issue that you can sign only 5 people per tag. To me this seems like an ingame design feature. And If you look at the number of countries this set in team 157 this set and 463 in january. 2/3 of the players have voted with their legs.


@gwagers moderators have applied the spirit of the rules argument with country deletions in primary. Why wouldn't moderators do this in team? The server clearly needs it.


Based on this, you're implying that the difference between the 463 players in January and the 157 this set is because of the moderators' unwillingness to delete multi-tag teams. Based on my personal experience, though, I would argue that the difference between 463 in January (a time at which Team server as it is now was either just a rumor or in its first set) and 157 now can actually be found in the number of players that didn't want to play in 5-country tags and either left the game or just went to play in Council/Alliance. In other words, people didn't leave this server because certain clans wanted to play as full-blown alliances, but rather because clans weren't allowed to.

Which turns this discussion in a completely different direction, really.
Peloponnese (PEHL-oh-puh-NEES): a mythical land of cheesecake

"We cannot enter into alliance with neighboring princes until we are acquainted with their designs..."--Sun Tzu

Who has time for that? BLAST THEM ALL!

Mr. Lime Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 0:35:52

Originally posted by warlorde:
Originally posted by MrCrimson:
Jesus, so many people can't read.
Had you read Vic you'd have noticed that if what you say is true then you are not in the 90%...


the problem here is not literacy, the problem is your math. soon it will be 90% because RD will push others out of the server. the point he is trying to make is that a 5 man team playing legit has no power in this server. we are just here to live as RD sees fit. if we anoy the or if we are good at taking retals they kill us. so because you have 30 players vs 5 you are now skilled players? bull fluff

i read previously that the moderators are in RD... this would make sense why they are not deleting RD countries. i dont really know if thats true or not bu when i read comments like Slag's i begin to think it is true



please tell me wich mods are in RD i'm sure the rest of us would like to know as well who's been holding out
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Vic Rattlehead Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 0:41:31

Originally posted by MrCrimson:
Interesting how people complain about teams working together, specifically RD when you were all doing it before us. The ones fluffing are the ones that got fed their own bullfluff.


I read that one fine.

Originally posted by Slagpit:
It's fairly obvious that an explanation would be wasted.


Didn't arrogance like this cost you a bunch of members when you were a head in Evo? Come off it you prick.

gwagers, you may be right, there were lots of people upset that there alliances wouldn't be allowed to continue in Team server, but there were also a lot of people excited for a new gameplay experience. I didn't play this server when it was 1a until there was news there would be changes. Then I checked it out to get used to the different turn pace from the server formerly known as Council. There are several NAers with the same basic profile, didn't play until it became team.

Little e, it's not that we have no power so much as we have no chance. I now have no idea which tags I can grab without getting killed by one group or another. We have enough power to eff up any group of people's set, we just don't have the ability to make it through a set without pissing off what is basically a midsize alliance server clan.
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snawdog Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 1:06:07

I guess the thing that amazes me the most is that the devs/admins seem to think there is nothing wrong with the set up on this server...
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Mr Lemon Chiffon Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 1:13:17

Originally posted by snawdog:
I guess the thing that amazes me the most is that the devs/admins seem to think there is nothing wrong with the set up on this server...


Why would you question the knowledge and authority of the game admins/owners?
They are doing a great job.

Only people complaining are the ones who don't get thier way.
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Mr Lemon Chiffon Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 1:21:28

Originally posted by Trock:

To make the game fair for all players and accessible to new players, players in the primary, express, and tourney server should not engage in any outside of game organizing which gives them an advantage over what can be accomplished through normal, ingame diplomacy.



I thought this was TEAM server.
Why enforce primary/tourney/express server rules here?
What next? Enforce tourney on Alliance when you don't like it?

Here is an idea: Go find another game you really like and tell the game owners here that you want those rules enforced.
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Slagpit Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 1:45:06

redacted

Edited By: Slagpit on Aug 30th 2010, 3:13:34
See Original Post

Mr. Lime Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 2:57:21

i lobbes you slag =)
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qzjul Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 3:10:26

The major problem is that it's much more difficult to see if clans are actually one clan or merely one or two cooperating on some issue; plus if we find something like that happening, do we delete all 10? or just some of them? etc...



What we would need, I guess, is a definitive criterion for determining what behaviours constitute abuse of the rules. This is reasonably straight forward in primary, though a little bit of human judgement needs to be applied. However, for team, this becomes *way* more complicated. How do we determine exactly which behaviours are and are not legitimate?


Come up with a good, effective, simple criterion, and we will consider implementation.
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gwagers Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 3:32:41

Just for clarification, qzjul, what makes judgment factors in Team server more complicated than Primary?
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"We cannot enter into alliance with neighboring princes until we are acquainted with their designs..."--Sun Tzu

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Slagpit Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 3:34:54

The issue with team server is finding a standard of conduct that is both enforceable and fair. I cannot think of any standard that satisfies both criteria.

An example of a standard that is enforceable but not fair would be deleting any two tags who both war the same tag. However, would this be fair? What if tag A instigated the aggression towards both tags B and C? What if tag A has 5 five members, tag B has 2 members, and tag C has 3 members?

An example of a standard is that fair but not enforceable would be to not allow groups of tags to enforce any policy that is harmful to the server. After all, why does it matter if two tags are named pang1 and pang2 if they aren't hurting anyone else? However, this policy is not enforceable. The game moderators for each server do not play on those servers because we want them to be as impartial as possible when dealing with deletions and player issues. How would someone who doesn't play be able to keep track of all of the teams, especially when many of them exist only for a set or have no presence on the boards at all? How would moderators decide what is good or bad for the server? What if someone claims to be a representative of a tag on the boards but doesn't actually play there? What do we do when one member of a tag violates the spirit of the rules, should we delete the whole tag or just him?

Besides practical concerns, there are also philosophical concerns. Team is a clan server. The admins would like to see mature clans that have meaningful (both positive and negative) relationships with other clans. We don't want to see one group of players teaming up to gain an unfair advantage, but it has to be up to the players to prevent that. When MKR, RAG, and BEER were teaming up and killing other countries, I Fsed them with half of their numbers and won. The next set they changed most of their policies. Why can't you guys do that?

As many RD members have pointed out, other clans were doing this long before they appeared on the server. Many posters on the boards have been warning the community about what would eventually happen if players continued to use numerical advantages to enforce bad policies, but for the most part no one listened. If I had deleted the clans who were teaming up to do bad things, I would have been roasted on these boards for being biased and tons of players would throw a fit. However, now that RD basically has control of the server and RD are the Bad Guys, a lot more people want to see the game moderators get involved and delete them. Is it really so hard to recruit people to fight RD?

It's also worth realizing that if a strict interpretation of the rules means that half of the players on the server would be subject to deletion, maybe the rules or the server itself need to be changed.

The primary server is different because diplomacy is not a major part of gameplay. Ideally, diplomacy is handled country to country. Players teaming up for the most part are easy to spot. The situation isn't ideal and some guilty players escape without being deleted, but it's easy for honest players to avoid getting deleted for spirit of the rules violations.

By the way, the reason I got so pissed off before was because I find it to be very rude to post someone's emails on the boards without permission. I apologize for letting my temper get the better of me.

Edited By: Slagpit on Aug 30th 2010, 3:47:36
See Original Post

Requiem Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 3:41:53

Slag: don't be ridiculous you know damn good and well that this sever was INTENDED to be 5 men working together not 4- 5 Man teams working together... Jesus H. Christ that would mean the changes made i.e. limit of 5 per team meant nothing and this is still 1a. Why did Pang/Qz go through the effort and time to redo it? Your logic is a bit off here good buddy!

Qz: It's easy and you know it is... Same way you do it in primary. To tell who is doing it is basically as easy as getting a government handout from Obama! Tell you what I'll do the hard work and provide you a list of people who violate the "spirit of this server" and no it won't be bias!

Lord save us all!
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qzjul Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 4:04:32

"as easy as getting a government handout from Obama!"

Get me one of these handouts, and I'll do whatever you need! :)

more seriously though, it's really not that easy. On primary we simply look for more than a couple players acting together; here, because this is a clan server, clans are allowed to interact, so we could be deleting people for being DP's or something, as slag said. Granted RD's case is a bit more obvious, but it's hard to see where to draw the line. Ideally players would enforce this as was done in the past on this server...

We may have to step in eventually, but we'll have to be careful how we do it at that point.
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Requiem Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 4:10:55

I don't like the philosophy of setting back and hoping things will get better. When there is a know problem you should work to resolve it not set back and wait until you are forced to do something.

Hey it's not my game to run, but my guess is that by the time you decide (by the sound of your post) to do something it may be to late.

Just a thought.
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de1i Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 4:22:47

RD has been FSed 2 of the past 3 resets (not including this one because there hasn't been a 'war' so to speak that I've seen).

Worried about your spirit of the game being broken? Then don't hit RD, pretty simple.

NOW3P Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 5:16:52

So the land trading between individual RD tags doesn't serve as an extremely strong indication that there is inter-team cooperation going on?

You guys should just reset this server back to old 1a style - the team thing is obviously just too ripe for abuse for people to ever play by the "spirit of the rules".

Just my $.02

Trock

Member
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Aug 30th 2010, 6:27:15

May I ask why do the players have to fix the RD problem by themselves to reclaim the server to it's original state. Why do I need to waste my time to coordinate players to set up a server to a state that it should be in. Isn't that the moderators job? Even if a coalition is started why should we want to waste a month of regular playing?

Excuse me for my business comparison here, but if a business lost 2/3 of it's customers I as a owner WOULD do something to correct this. I wouldn't tell my customer to get 30 people together and fix it themselves. At what point do you suggest it requires some fixing? Would you allow 100 people to work together on the server? I'm sure you guys have put in a plenty of time on the game why let it fail for something like this. You are working in express to make suicider protection how is this issue any less game breaking than suiciders in express? Why are you taking action in Primary/Express but not here?

Last time I used eestats number of countries per set. Now I used earthempires number of players from top scres so the results are a bit different. Another major factor to not is that Primary and Alliance have balanced after first 2 sets team is continuing to fall. Express has also been stable for last 13 weeks which is 4 roughly last 3months.

Primary 305/418 = 72.9% play still
418 oldest
585
314
305 newest

Alliance 675/1008 = 66.9% play still
1008 oldest
814
695
704
675 newest

Team 142/329 = 43.1%play still
398 (Was still old alliance) Oldest
329
272
236
203
189
168
142 newest

Express 120/521 = 23%
521
321
280
197
161
182
157
127
163
167
150
159
167
177
162
185
182
172
161
142
132
149
141
128
135
136
124 Amount of players stable since here
121
115
109
117
118
121
114
108
121
113
120
120 Newest

@slagpit I don't really see your relevance of 2 teams of 2 and 3 vs 5 here. The situation is more like 30 vs 5.

@RD there is no need to cry into my inbox.

Mr.Xanadu

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Aug 30th 2010, 6:37:38

How about this.. all tags listed as RD are 5 man teams.. all with 1:kill/dec war policies.. and we all happen to have FDP/FOP's with eachother... would that make you feel better?



*disclaimer, this is simply pointing out the folly in trying to enforce standards on political practices on a tag based server.. RD is RD, and will continue to be as such.. you hit, we kill, everyone is happy.*

EasyGoer Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 6:46:21

Perhaps instead of playing on the Team server RD needs to shift to Alliance and actually playing as 1 tag instead of trying to say they are seperate tags but acting together. Is it because you know you would get owned on Alliance?
Team server was intended for 5 player tags, my assumption would be that each 5 person tag acted independantly but that is not how the server is operating.
RD is playing as one Alliance with many names so should therefore be on the Alliance server, then again I don't expect to see them do that because they couldn't and wouldn't dominate and couldn't dicatate policy to a server like they do on Team.
Team server will be dead soon anyway so it won't be a concern then, it doesn't seem to concern the mods now as it is.

de1i Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 7:05:25

Trock, if you're going to blame RD for the decline of players on this server and make a list showing how many have left each reset then you should note when RD first started playing in said list.

EG, if you knew anything about RD then you'd already know that a lot of them already are playing Alliance. Hell some of them are even heads in various alliances.

EasyGoer Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 7:18:23

I do know that (I play with several in NA) but they don't come out and play as RD, instead they play an 'Alliance server' sized Alliance on the Team server. This has and is ruining Team server in my opinion, it is not being played, or run, as I thought it would or as I am sure it was intended.

de1i Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 7:39:04

This server was already losing plenty of people before RD even joined, but feel free to make them your scapegoat.

Pain Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 7:59:43

so are you guys against teams pacting with each other?
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Trock

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Aug 30th 2010, 8:04:31

I wonder if there is anyone who is not playing on the RD tag who supports not fixing the server.

Pain Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 8:20:27

Originally posted by Pain:
so are you guys against teams pacting with each other?
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NOW3P Game profile

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Aug 30th 2010, 8:44:39

Might I point out that forming a coalition to try to force RD to not have inter-team cooperation would be against the spirit of the rules of the server in and of itself?