It seems that every so often, I will run into a problem player. One who simply likes to cause trouble. For example, a player that takes the cards and drags them off the edge so that no one can see them, or so that its very hard to see them. Or the player will move around pieces on the board, or start playing cards out of someone's library or move your all your permanents into their library and then reload their deck.
One such player is torn. For example, I was playing a multiplayer game. There were 3 players playing, and a 4th seat was open in case more people wanted to join so that maybe we could start a 2hg. Torn joins, and he starts tragging everyone's stuff to the edges of the 50% zoom zone. In fact, by group selecting, and moving stuff, all but one card can be over the edge and beyond reach. Later, joined another one of my games and proceeded to stand up, change his name (i was only able to infer this, i couldn't see it), and then proceed to imitate someone else.
I would like to suggest a couple changes therefore:
1) everyone present in a room has their name displayed, whether they are seated or not.
2) cards cannot be pushed outside a given margin. If they would be pushed outside that margin, they are instead placed within bounds where everyone can see, or are not moved at all.
3) Players or a host can establish some sort of ban list. Possible we could have usernames and logins to access lackey? This would prevent players from changing their name to imitate someone else.
4) Perhaps some kind of banning option.
I am saddened that such measures might be necessary, but some of these things might be helpful to prevent people from doing by mistake. For example, 2 different players might both want to identify themselves as "jace" but that might cause some confusion.
Here I assumed you meant players who didn't know the rules and insisted (incorrectly) that you were wrong two or three times and then stormed out of the room (only had one of those, but it was a frustrating experience).
Seems like the feature to do this might be to be able to anonymously IP Ban another player (like if Torn is causing problems we say "ban this dude" and you've just banned his IP). If an IP got enough individual bans it would be banned from the whole server.
however it gets done, i agree w/ fistsofthor it needs to be done....the torn guy he referred to trolled the server for an entire day just wasting peoples time.
Torn needs to be kicked from the server perminately otherwise I could see lackeyccg losing a lot of its playerbase
Well, it doesnt even need to be a server based kicked. If each user were to be assigned some sort of permanent id, and you could create a list of ids that you do not want to be allowed to join your games, that would be sufficient. Now, these numbers would need to really be tied to a player. So, IPs are probably not sufficient in the long term. But, those would be nice for starters. That way, the community can self-regulate what a good player is and what a bad player is.
I know Trevor has been slaving away at a new version of Lackey with alot of improvements in it behind the scenes. He hasn't specifically mentioned any sort of ban list to me, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. Even if there isn't Trevor has done an outstanding job listening to the community, so have a lil faith that once this is brought to his attention it'll get handled.
Quote from: Alastair on April 03, 2010, 11:09:42 AM
I know Trevor has been slaving away at a new version of Lackey with alot of improvements in it behind the scenes. He hasn't specifically mentioned any sort of ban list to me, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. Even if there isn't Trevor has done an outstanding job listening to the community, so have a lil faith that once this is brought to his attention it'll get handled.
As to that, I simply can go on enough about how great lackey is and how i really appreciate all the hard work the programmer(s) do. The reason why I bother putting this here is because i believe that the programmer(s) will listen to us.
I think a Ban feature would be a little much, how about an Ignore player by IP address?
Ignore could prevent said player from entering your game.
(http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m242/boy8500/tornMessing.jpg)
Well, I should probably give other examples. For example, this player entered our game, then stands up and changes his name to duplicate someone else's name and started dragging everyone's cards to the edges. Then he proceeded to move items from the table to off the edge of the 50% zoom side. Made players vacate their seats. I cant do that unless im host, but somehow he is able to. Then, having the duplicate name as somebody else in the room, he moves their stuff between zones. It went from a 5 player edh game to everyone quitting because he was messing with everyone's stuff and they were unable to play. Perhaps it could be a check box where only seated players are allowed to move items?
the problem with simply banning people is that it becomes very easy to simply ban people who you dont like for other reasons. rather than try to co-exist with others, you can and some people i know simply ban everyone who disagrees with them. it might not seem like alot, only the banner and the bannee get the effect but it has the effect of slowly splitting the player base
new player doesnt know how a card works? stop wasting my time noob, get out *ban*
someone said something i took the wrong way? *ban*
now it might not be so harsh certainly not immediately. but it can easily be used as a way to avoid mistakes or introspection since you can always take it out on others, even people not as bad as tom
that said, what tom did would certainly be annoying. let there be a checkbox when a game is made that spectators cant interact with the cards
the reason im asking for a checkbox and not making it default is kibitzing is a very nice way to learn and understand a casual game in progress or a new game youv learnt for the first time. making the spectator never iinteract is bad but having contorlled situations for when you allow and dont allow it isnt so bad
Well, I think making the ban list a maximum of two days would work. Even one day would be acceptable. Additionally, all players both spectating and not spectating should be listed. And the check mark to make it so only seated players can move stuff, is a thing can be a thing we have to check. I have no problem with that.
Additionally, we can make it so that only players are able to move their own cards as a second check box. (and then they can allow someone else to take control by right clicking).
I mean, I can understand not wanting to allow players to shun each other quickly and easily forever so as not to split the player base, but if you make it so that the ban lists only lasts for 24 hours, then that accomplishes everything in terms of quickly removing troublesome players. Because we need a way to get rid of troublesome players. And perhaps, if a user bans a player 5 days that week, he can give a week long ban, and then start back from the beginning.
Do, near the end of an edh game, torn came in today.
I have two screen shots for you. First he enters and stands up, then he kicks me out of my seat, then he spawns tons and tons of tokens:
(http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m242/boy8500/tornMessing2.jpg)
Then, he changes his name to the name of someone in the game after he stands up. And then does this:
(http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m242/boy8500/tornMessing3.jpg)
Does anyone see how this might be ban-worthy?
Like, this isn't some player who plays telling time from his hand when he meant to play impulse from his hand and looks at 4 cards instead of 3. Like, when a player repeatedly tries to mess with others and harasses them, something needs to be done.
torn MUST die!!!!
Now seriously, I am 100% in favour of ban/kick features being implemented in the future versions of lackey. Or at the very least more control over seating and access to games (the most obvious being setting a password to join a game for example) to hosts. Due in no small part to my experience of this 'blight' player (Torn) on the otherwise friendly, supportive and welcoming community that is the regular lackey user base.
Wow, Some people have too much time on their hands. I would say that this is why i haven't gotten on lackey for a while, but it ain't XD.
It would be great to see some sort of IP ban feature, but maybe have a dialog box pop up when you're about to ban someone from your game, maybe with a list of reasons... then maybe a couple more Dialogs asking if you're REALLY sure. That would most likely alleviate some of the Ragebans, i think.
THough, frankly, i think Torn has figured out the inherent cruddyness of the old code, and is trying to be a total moron.
Who knows.
Or, perhaps the hoster of a game should be allowed to check a box for an individual game that gives him (or her) the option to see a player when they join and determine whether that player should be allowed or denied the permissions to perform game actions.
Just recording another incident. First he ruined one game that was going on. Then, I was trying to start a type 4 game or a DC-10 game.
(http://i106.photobucket.com/albums/m242/boy8500/tornMessing4.jpg)
Also, I get the idea that adding counters to 30 cards real quick may put stress on the server or at least may raise server costs.
Do the programmers of lackey see why there may be a player who is ban-worthy and that the lackey community needs it.
I can certainly see the need for a host to be able to remove players from his/her table. I think however that ban functions from the server should remain with Trevor and those he sees fit to give that ability to.
And for the record I don't have anything to do with the Lackey code at present. I've helped Trevor out by hosting the server in the past and still help him out with forum issues when they pop up. :)
Also an update: I've brought this to Trevor's attention but his message says he is recovering from laser eye surgery so I'm not certain how soon he'll be able to look into the situation and resolve it.
I stand behind the passcode option, not allowing others to alter one's field. The fact he was able to boot someone without hosting it, could 'torn' have cracked into and altered his Lackey?
Quote from: Garfield on April 07, 2010, 02:20:49 AM
I stand behind the passcode option, not allowing others to alter one's field. The fact he was able to boot someone without hosting it, could 'torn' have cracked into and altered his Lackey?
I don't believe that is likely at this point. Not even the server host has that sort of ability in the present version. More probable is that he found a bug and has been exploiting it. See my above message for an update.
Quote from: Alastair on April 07, 2010, 02:14:57 AM
I can certainly see the need for a host to be able to remove players from his/her table. I think however that ban functions from the server should remain with Trevor and those he sees fit to give that ability to.
And for the record I don't have anything to do with the Lackey code at present. I've helped Trevor out by hosting the server in the past and still help him out with forum issues when they pop up. :)
Also an update: I've brought this to Trevor's attention but his message says he is recovering from laser eye surgery so I'm not certain how soon he'll be able to look into the situation and resolve it.
When I say "ban" I mean, "ban from games I am hosting." That is what I mean by a ban function for users.
Quote from: Alastair on April 07, 2010, 02:14:57 AM
I can certainly see the need for a host to be able to remove players from his/her table. I think however that ban functions from the server should remain with Trevor and those he sees fit to give that ability to.
This.
And this will not be a problem once Trevor has introduced a registered user system (something he has talked about since before I started using Lackey).
Until that feature is implemented, there's not a whole lot of things one can do to prevent this.
However, I am not sure why watchers can move cards around? That shouldn't be allowed, and once your game has filled up on players, no one else should be able to sit down and play.
If Trevor decided to implement a id/pass for signing onto his server, he can use the id/pass from this forum. I don't know how hard it is to create a truely secure lock for LackeyCCG. Good luck, Trevor.
when lackey was updated for roe, did any of these type of changes get made?
Lackey wasn't updated. Only the magic plugin. Just because M:tG is the most popular game here, doesn't mean it IS Lackey :p
You need to be really careful about heading down this direction. Much better than any kind of banning would probably be tracking the state of the game so if something weird happens it can be rolled back. IP addresses are not accurate representations of people in a large number of circumstances. I for instance use satellite internet which goes thru a terrestrial burst proxy so to like Wikipedia I look like the same person as countless people that have accounts with my ISP. And my IP address changes on a daily basis.
I would look into some kind of private/public key framework so people can identify themselves uniquely if they really want to have a secure experience. Anything less sophisticated would be ham handed at best. Encourage people to setup private servers maybe. If you setup user ids you might as well start charging for the service, because that's what it looks like.
I've seen some players goofing around, twiddling things they shouldn't be, mostly just imps jumping into open seats before any game was underway. Probably just immature kids doing it because they can, or frustrated people who sat down and did not find someone sitting in front of their PC just waiting for someone to sit down.
Anyway it occurred to me that if every session was recorded, there would be a mechanism for not only reporting problem people but also uploading a recording of what they actually did. It would also be a way to verify any kind of knocks a player receives from other players if you can uniquely identify them.
Another idea, instead of instituting IDs or any kind there could be a league mechanism where players are assigned IDs in the form of public/private keys by other players in order to join a group. That would be both a decentralized means of insuring people you are playing with are reputable and a way to organize tournaments and league play (etc) online.
I don't know. I think there should just be an ignore feature. I have never found myself pinned against the wall from a troll. If someone is fail-trolling me, I generally just ignore it. However you can't do that here. So perhaps the best way to avoid it is to simply host a game for your fellow friends.
A 'sign-up' system would be amazing, but I don't expect Lackey/Trevor to go out of his way to do that anytime soon or ever.