Me against Teamswitcher (6 players default)

[Pater]

It was the strangest game. Started normally with Mr. Clean (or someone posing to be him) starting a 6 player match.

I started as SA, quickly allied with NA. The other 4 formed another alliance.

Early game I quickly took out African fleet by deploying battleships over his carriers. Africa was going to be mine.

But then something really strange happened. First, I noticed that the launch orders I gave were being nullified, the bombers sent back. Someone else had complete control over all my units. It soon became clear that he also had the ability to talk as anyone in the game.

I decided to play even under these circumstances, because I like a challenge. A player who has to resort to this needs a handicap against me, so it was a challenge. For every bomber he sent away, I clicked them back to their targets in Africa. He then clicked them back, but I was faster. It became a question of speed, and I prevailed: Africa lighted up, since this hacker was also stupid enough to launch when he thought he had me.

My bombers started nuking my own country. I made a launch at western africa by repeatedly making the bombers stay on course, and left my alliance, since the hacker had given my silos orders to shoot at my friend. Those nukes found their targets at my ex-friend's land, giving me points.

The NA player realized the absurdity of this match, and left.

I heavily negged the African player, and ended up positive myself, all while my bombers were nuking my own carrier fleet and my silos reverting back to air defence.

I then left. I consider this to be a victory. The hacker couldn't stop me from nuking his own country, even if he was able to give my units orders the same as me. He also couldnt manage to make my score negative.



I post this mainly as a warning. There is a way to hack a game in such a way that the hacker has complete control over all the players' units. Another possibility is that this player was actually multi clienting somehow, playing all the other 4 who allied.

From the hacker's activities I deduced he was probably playing at least Africa. This country belonged to Mr. Clean, the host. I'm sorry to say I didn't write down the IP before the game.

Conclusion. Defcon desperately needs a moderating system and a way to control this kind of game ruining. These guys will not stop if left alone.

[Ace Rimmer]

It's called teamswitching and is a feature, not a bug.

[Pater]

It's called teamswitching and is a feature, not a bug.

Clarify. He can teamswitch to me and give orders to my units?

[hi there (name sux)]

There is an option called TeamSwitching, in which you use the number keys to switch between different teams. It's near the bottom of the advanced options while you are in the lobby. I think this is what Ace is referring too. From what I hear some hosts will secretly turn this on before the game starts to get an advantage/mess with peoples heads/have a laugh.

[xander]

As Ace Rimmer said, it is called TeamSwitching. It is a server option. The host enabled it. You didn't know that it had been enabled because you didn't check the advanced server settings. If you had, you would have known about it ahead of time. Yes, the guy that did it to you is an ass, but you need to take some responsibility to check for yourself.

In terms of what TeamSwitching does, it allows you to use the numbers 1-6 to take control of any team. If it is enabled, any player can take control of any other players units. It is useful for teaching other players the game, or for setting up particular scenarios using AIs.

xander

[Ace Rimmer]

It can be annoying when it's "sneaked" in like that, especially if you don't know what's happening. The first time it happened to me, I didn't know what was going on and was the only player (other than the host) to finish with a positive score.

Now I always look at the advanced settings, even if I trust the host. It's good to know what you'll be playing eh?

There was one time that Radiant enabled it (we all knew) and we went 5v1, it was hilarious because all five of us (allied I think) tried to make him nuke himself (collateral) or disable his units. He was fast enough to overcome all five of us though.

We could have won if people would have used the silos to target themselves (using each silo to "self target"), which caused the nuke to not fire and be removed from the stockpile instead of having to keep switching fired nukes back to "disarm".

[Pater]

There is an option called TeamSwitching, in which you use the number keys to switch between different teams. It's near the bottom of the advanced options while you are in the lobby. I think this is what Ace is referring too. From what I hear some hosts will secretly turn this on before the game starts to get an advantage/mess with peoples heads/have a laugh.

Very well. Shouldnt this be disabled by default in a multi human game?

"It is a feature, not a bug". Yes, sure it is. A feature to help griefers grief.

Really.. Defcon is cool but the game has way too many problems, bugs, exploits, etc to be enjoyable. Every other game gets ruined.

And whats worse, the community seems to be mostly rotten. Most of the players are either cheaters/griefers themselves, or positive towards it, or negative towards someone condemnding it, or just otherwise assholes.

Maybe I should come back in a year to see if the game's makers came up with a moderating system, or the remaining 10 players spend their time ruining each other's games.

[Pater]

As Ace Rimmer said, it is called TeamSwitching. It is a server option. The host enabled it. You didn't know that it had been enabled because you didn't check the advanced server settings. If you had, you would have known about it ahead of time. Yes, the guy that did it to you is an ass, but you need to take some responsibility to check for yourself.

In terms of what TeamSwitching does, it allows you to use the numbers 1-6 to take control of any team. If it is enabled, any player can take control of any other players units. It is useful for teaching other players the game, or for setting up particular scenarios using AIs.

xander

Dont be unreasonable. I wont take responsibility for an obscure and idiotic setting that should be left disabled unless everyone agrees.

[Ace Rimmer]

Dont be unreasonable. I wont take responsibility for an idiotic setting that should be left disabled unless everyone agrees.

Part of everyone agreeing would be you A. checking the setting and B. letting the host know you don't want to play that way.

Chances are, the rest won't either and the game won't start with it enabled.

[Feud]

There is an option called TeamSwitching, in which you use the number keys to switch between different teams. It's near the bottom of the advanced options while you are in the lobby. I think this is what Ace is referring too. From what I hear some hosts will secretly turn this on before the game starts to get an advantage/mess with peoples heads/have a laugh.

Very well. Shouldnt this be disabled by default in a multi human game?

"It is a feature, not a bug". Yes, sure it is. A feature to help griefers grief.

Really.. Defcon is cool but the game has way too many problems, bugs, exploits, etc to be enjoyable. Every other game gets ruined.

And whats worse, the community seems to be mostly rotten. Most of the players are either cheaters/griefers themselves, or positive towards it, or negative towards someone condemnding it, or just otherwise assholes.

Maybe I should come back in a year to see if the game's makers came up with a moderating system, or the remaining 10 players spend their time ruining each other's games.

It is disabled by default. Then he decided to change it.

as far as bugs and exploits, aside from a few minor headaches and the ship exploit (which may or may not get fixed) it is one of the most bug free games that I've played.

As for the community, see this topic of mine:

http://forums.introversion.co.uk/defcon/viewtopic.php?t=4637

Things were actually VERY good, until the retail release. Things will probably calm down in a month or two, once the bug summer realeases really get going and as many of hte current trouble makers go back to school.

Dont be unreasonable. I wont take responsibility for an obscure and idiotic setting that should be left disabled unless everyone agrees.

When you click "Ready", you agree to the settings. Everyone did agree, to having it on. It's kinda like the small print on a contract, if you don't read it then sorry, you get what you get (by reading the fine print I learned that I can set off fireworks indoors with out violating my lease, so long as I fix any damage I cause ).

Please don't take this though as approval for his actions, or as a slight against you.

[Pater]

Dont be unreasonable. I wont take responsibility for an idiotic setting that should be left disabled unless everyone agrees.

Part of everyone agreeing would be you A. checking the setting and B. letting the host know you don't want to play that way.

Chances are, the rest won't either and the game won't start with it enabled.

Id rather not have a mile long checklist of things to do and check before the game.

I mean this could have been done in a SMART way too.

[bert_the_turtle]

You did implicitly agree to it. For TeamSwitching to be active,
a) custom game mode needs to be set
b) the team switching option itself needs to be turned on
Changing either of the two makes all players who have signalled they are ready back to the unready state. Whenever that happens, you should check the advanced options (changed ones are marked for easier checking) whether you still like them. TeamSwitching is no different there than PermitDefection or RadarSharing. It's very little effort.

And maybe I misread something, but nobody approved of the sneaky ways of the host.

[Ace Rimmer]

Id rather not have a mile long checklist of things to do and check before the game.

I mean this could have been done in a SMART way too.

Mile long eh? Heh, one click and a quick scan for "edited" settings which are highlighted and even tell you what they do? If you say so...

[xander]

Very well. Shouldnt this be disabled by default in a multi human game?

It is. In order to change it the host must first select a game type of "Custom." Looking over the games on the metaserver right now, I see only one game that is using custom settings. That is out of nearly 40 games that are being advertised. If you join a game with custom settings, and you click "Ready," you are implicitly agreeing to all of the settings that the host is using -- RadarSharing, PermitDefection, city sizes and distributions, the scoring mode, the timers, and TeamSwitching, among other things. It seems silly to me to play a game when you don't know what the rules are -- I always check the advanced settings before I click "Ready" just to see what the populations are going to be like. As all changed settings are marked, it makes it pretty easy to spot them.

"It is a feature, not a bug". Yes, sure it is. A feature to help griefers grief.

Yes, it can be abused. However, as I said above, there are legitimate uses for it. It is great for instructing people on the intricacies of the game when they are new to it -- it allows them to watch what you are doing with your units, and allows you to show them what to do with their units. It is like playing Poker or Bridge with an open hand. It is also very good for setting up scenarios with the CPUs, which can be good for fiddling out other bugs, or making movies, or capturing screenshots, or a host of other uses. So, while the setting has the potential to be abused, it can also be very useful for non-cheating purposes.

Really.. Defcon is cool but the game has way too many problems, bugs, exploits, etc to be enjoyable. Every other game gets ruined.

I'm sorry you feel that way. If it is really bothering you, I suggest you report the bugs in a value neutral manner, or go away. If you don't tell IV what the bugs are, they can't get fixed. If you report bugs in such a way that come across as a hostile ass, then people are likely to respond negatively towards you. If that is too much to ask, then we don't want or need you here, and would be happy to see you go.

And whats worse, the community seems to be mostly rotten. Most of the players are either cheaters/griefers themselves, or positive towards it, or negative towards someone condemnding it, or just otherwise assholes.

Or perhaps all of your posts are so hostile and judgmental that the community is being hostile to you. I am certain that you are referring to me when you talk about community members who are "...negative towards someone condemnding [sic] it..." I am not negative towards most people that condemn cheating. Personally, I dislike people that spam the chat box. However, experience has taught me that the most effective way to deal with them is to ignore them. Thanks to bert_the_turtle, I can even /ignore them, and I don't even see their text. If you would get off of your high horse for a minute, and actually listen to what people are telling you, you would realize that most of us agree that there are trolls, and that they are annoying as hell. We have looked for solutions, and even found a few. There are other problems where the consensus seems to be that the cure is worse than the disease (time trolling for instance, where a player puts the game into realtime to be an ass -- though bert_the_turtle has dealt with that, too, with his dedicated server, by allowing specially anointed spectators to kick players).

As to chat spam causing players to go out of sync (an argument that you used in another thread), that is bullshit. In the vast amount of data that Defcon sends, the text is nearly lost. I have run some tests using the dedicated server in super verbose mode. Watching my network statistics, periods of heavy chat (where I sent two or three messages every second) are indistinguishable from periods of silence. Chat doesn't hit the network that hard, and shouldn't cause you any problems unless you are right on the cusp of having enough connectivity to play the game in the first place.

Maybe I should come back in a year to see if the game's makers came up with a moderating system, or the remaining 10 players spend their time ruining each other's games.

Please.

xander

[Sardonic]

Yeah Mr. Clean did the same thing in a game I played with him today. I still managed to overcome him however and win, even as he kept misdirecting my silos to hit myself, bombers to kill my own cities, canceling my submarine launches.(made backstabbing america as south america hard). Pretty sad how he couldn't win even with all that tomfoolery.