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Conversation about the Flag-Score-Bug

I just had a conversation with someone on IRC about the question why we replayed the first match, but did not replay the second (the replay), although something "strange" happened there too. The person was referring to this situation: Video

I then explained why there is a difference between a "flag-score-bug" and to what happened there (which we called "flag-bug" in that conversation). In a nutshell: What happened there didn't affect the score/result and it's actually even correct. In real-time (without lag) the player picking up the flag was first, the player returning it only reported it faster (due to less lag). Thats why it appears strange when the server corrects itself to all others than the player who picks it up, including the demo/video. Furthermore, only deciding the way we did prevents that in future games players would want to have a high ping to force a replay, which is highly undesirable.

You will prolly best understand it all if you read the full conversation. For privacy reasons I renamed the one chatting with me to X. Link: Log of the IRC conversation. We hope this clarifies really everything now. We are happy that the one got in touch with us and gave us the chance to listen to how we explain our decisions, because we really try to give our best within our boundaries of not getting paid for it and only doing it for a hobby.

 

Video of the flag-score-bug

We created a video of the flag-score-bug which led to the one score MOFO would have won the game with, if we didn't replay it.

We've heard some players doubt our neutrality in that decision. We would kindly like to ask these players to take a look at the video. We would also like to ask the ones some questions: if we decided to count THAT as a regular score and therefore as a win for MOFO, wouldn't that much more be "biased" than replaying it? What would happen in the next games? Because if you don't do anything the first time it occurs, you kinda have to decide the same way in the future - or argue a lot. And if you are one of the players doubting and seriously still think you wouldn't have decided to replay the match, we have a final question for you: would you allow a team to win just by provoking that bug succesfully maybe like 3 times in a game? This is what could happen, though. ;-)

video

 

 

Poll for the Qualification maps

We figured that it might be an idea to run the polls for the Qualification Maps in the SauerClub Forum so the mapchoice is at least influenced by a big group of people, who play the game pretty often. We'll see how it works out.

We can't do it publically as it could be manipulated very easily then (usually by the change of an IP or the deletion of a cookie) - and sending out emails and counting all votes manually is way too much work to do it every month. We hope you understand.

The poll for December's maps has already started and runs for a week. Sauerclub-Members: Please participate.

 

November's Title Matches took place

Congratulations to all winners: Majikal won in ffa and TC in capture, CTF and iCTF. tenshi won instagib for the third time in a row and became Grand Champion which means that he is now blocked for the next title match.

In CTF we had a flag-score-bug. Some of you may know that bug already from public games. You can see it in the demo of the relevant game after 5.10 mins (demo / video). It occurs mainly if 

(1) someone returns the opponents flag,
(2) the own flag carrier is very close to the one returning the opponents flag and
(3) the ping of the flag carrier is substantially higher than of the one returning the flag.

The server then "believes" that the flag got returned already and as the flag is close enough it counts a score.

The outcome is unfair as you score whereever you may be, which in this particular case was even right next to the opponents flagbase, where the flag just got picked up a few seconds earlier. We first decided to let the match go on as it could have ended very clear so the one score would not have mattered really. Unfortunately the game ended so close that it did matter and we decided for a replay.

The bug is the same with something you might have seen too: you sometimes watch someone pick up a flag although it got returned already. Here it's rather that see things too late. The one picking up the flag was actually earlier, but due to the lag the server reported it later. It also does not really affect the game, unlike the flag-score-bug.

We hope the bug will get fixed with the next Cube2-release, the solution could be that the flag events have a number and get refused if they are reported to early.

Ace mentioned that we should replay every game with a flag bug, not only if the final result is close, because there is a psychological effect anyway. we believe he's right and therefore will cancel the game whenever we see it happen and replay it.

 

PSL Title Matches tonight, one last word regarding Asylum

The PSL Title Matches will take place in a bit more than an hour, hope to see you!

We did not really want to heat-up the Asylum matter as it really does not help much to argue about something we won't change. However, some things have been said repeatedly that made us doubt people have understand what we wrote. Maybe our post was too complicated and did not stress out the basic arguments enough to be understandable for non-native english speakers. We would therefore like to repeat the core points we gave and respond to some points that have been brought up against us:

1. Our decision is based on what we found out technically via our anti-cheat binary. We let Asylum play again after his match vs. Undertaker to make really sure he cheats. And he did.

2. We won't provide the technical evidence that we have - for two reasons: most importantly it would tremendously help the wrong people and besides that the critics of our decision would probably still not be satisfied because they might not even have the technical background to know what we were doing and/or you could always doubt any evidence by saying it's fake. An example: if we gave a log that showed some output indicating a cheat, critics could still just say that this is not a log from that game, it would not prove anything as it's just some text. Even what the critics refer to as the only "real" evidence (ie. to fully disclose how the mechanism works) would not solve the conflict. It would still not give the critics the "absolute" evidence that asylum was detected, as the critics were not seeing the mechanism getting triggered live during the game. We really have no incentive to reveal that information therefore. It would only do harm and mean a lot of work to put in a new way to detect cheaters, if not more. We can't make you understand, but we hope you do.

3. The Videos are no proof, nor do or did we ever claim that they are(!). They are what we created to make you see how such a cheat works, and we picked the situations where Asylum must have "guessed" where the enemy is. We had the impression that so many good "guesses" in a 5 minute game would be convincing and therefore might serve you as something to believe in our decision. And: Of course Asylum looked towards other directions in other scenes - but this does not prove his innocence. Keep in mind that that's exactly what everyone would do who tries to hide his cheating. If you really think about it, you'll figure that the moments where he did not look are the ONLY important ones. There - and only there - it's narrowed down to either you believe he's the best "guesser" of all times, or he's not.

4. We're not related to the SCC. We even objected as the whole thing was based not on techical evidence, but only on the opinion of some players. It was one of the reasons to start with our anti-cheat binary. But: I still believe the idea to do something against cheaters was honorable and we wish more people would see that all they were trying to do is solving an urgent matter in the best way they could. The means were insufficient and in our opinion it's good that they stopped. But the will they showed to do something is honorable and not something that should be used against them by others who don't do anything about cheating.

5. We are not related to the ESL, nor their responsibles. We do not even really follow what they do nor do we know how they came up with their decision on Asylum. Our decision was not even influenced by it, as we didn't even know he was banned there before. Our only bond to ESL was a few chats with XP from ESL and the mutual agreement that we would not stage games at the same days and times. We also considered having the ESL ladders for a way to qualify for PSL without much following up and that's about it.

6. FK had the chance to replay their title match. The timeframe was short, but we would like two things to be taken into consideration when talking about that issue: for one thing almost every other tournament would ban the team without even giving an opportunity to replay the match. You coud even say it's rather unfair that we gave the opportunity than vice versa. The other thing is that we had to look for a second qualifying team. A team who won with a cheater can't seriously expect neither us nor the rest of the community to wait until you it's fully satisfied with everything. We would even rather dare to say that the ones that play the game honestly have a right that the damage created by the cheater is as small as it can be for them.

7. We are not saying nor even trying to say or sugesting that Asylum or FK are people we don't like or anything similar. The opposite is much rather the case. We were always aware that they play an important role in the sauer community and are a bunch of very positive, friendly and good players. This Asylum issue won't change that, nor do we want the community in any way to create false prejudices against FK and cube2.fr and vice versa. FK showed a reaction that is very human and would have been similar in any other clan who knows each other as well from mumble like FK does. Something like this is hard to believe if you believe you know someone well from audio-chat. Anyway - both FK and the whole french speaking community are still more than welcome to play in PSL (excluding of course Asylum for the year of his ban). And to make that very clear: we only kicked people for their behaviour during the Qualification games namely b/c of their name changes, provokative names, text-spamming and repeated disturbing from outside. This was not even something new, but rather something we even had to do and did several times in the months/years before. We had to take the necessary steps and we will do it again and against anyone who is attacking/dusturbing in the future.

 

 

We would like you to read some of the ongoing discussion. Yet again, we can only repeat that we have to accept and will accept that some of you will dislike us and PSL for the decision. We believe it your right to question what we do, and we actually even rather have people who do question what we do than people who don't reflect things at all. Anyway, we had to decide that way, otherwise the whole anti-cheat-client-philosohy would just be absurd... Ok. Here are some Links to the discussion:

Discussion at the TC-Forum (mind the order, its from latest to oldest) (mefisto seems to be one who really got our point)

Post at RB website

 

 
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