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Or did Caravan Distributor just get extremely lucky?
It's the last hour of the competition and I end up losing the amulet to JA. After that I watched the leaderboards continuously and never noticed anyone holding the $100 amulet.
Suddenly I noticed Caravan Distributor held the amulet with 1640 points on it - 800 more than when I had dropped the amulet 20 mins ago.
Checking Cando Delirium caravan had played against two opponents in that time Chaos Building and Nursery Malice.
Now, it is possible that CD just got extremely lucky at the end and faced off against 2 opponents who both lost very quickly in the last hour of the contest, but I think it is more likely that they are alts or friends of CD. I don't know how CD was able to drop and pick the same amulet in such fast succession though - I thought that was supposed to be fixed.
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I think it's important to note that he played those same two opponents three times each in rapid succession for a total of six wins in 10 minutes, according to Canto Delirium.
Edit: I'm getting 6 games in 10 minutes based on the timestamps on Twitter:
2 games won at 8:20: https://twitter.com/canto_delirium/stat … 6215737344
2 games won at 8:25: https://twitter.com/canto_delirium/stat … 8752335873
2 games won at 8:30: https://twitter.com/canto_delirium/stat … 3959898112
I know that's not an entirely reliable way to look at it, but I just wanted to clarify what I'm talking about.
I think the fact that his profits always equal the sum of their losses perfectly is pretty telling, even if the timestamps are wrong.
Last edited by Cobblestone (2015-03-27 05:11:35)
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One question: Is it possible the leaderboards were not updating properly and gave me a false sense of security at the end? And that CD was holding the amulet the entire time? I did noticed that the server went down for a bit.
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Looking at the change log, it doesn't look like a fix for the amulet dropping exploit was actually put in the latest version. I'm not sure, was this an oversight? It does look like Caravan Distributor used the amulet dropping exploit to win this contest, and there might have even been collusion involved. I decided to sit this one out, but I'm still disappointed to hear this is how things ended up...
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Just a part of the response from my side and regarding his score, he probably gained the amulet then dropped it immediately, played whether an accomplice or a bad stranger, rinsed and repeated, thus the close to a multiple of 200 score and his non appearance on the leaderboards.
It's way faster to rake points when there is few players because your amulet don't decay this way (though it works only for the top amulet) and you kinda hop over the random pulling thing.
Also if you find out CD is guilty of something, I must add there was a bug in the leaderboards of the 100$ amulet, Josh's score and mine were strangely inverted. I don't know how it happened but it's very misleading. Please fix that.
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Chaos Building comes online (and by "comes online", I mean first game ever played) 3.5 hours before the competition ends and, other than one game against Garments Infection, plays only against Caravan Disturber and Nursery Malice.*
Nursery Malice comes online 1.75 hours before the competition and plays 5 games exclusively between Caravan Disturber and Chaos Building. This is exactly what you would do if you wanted to secure the amulet (because in the last 2 hours you can stop playing after you have the lead).
Caravan Disturber doesn't lose any of those games. The games are fast, happening at least every 5 minutes.
Could be collusion, could be luck, could be Caravan bringing two friends into the game at the right time. Take it how you will.
Jason's response in the past seems to: well, the system should be fixed rather than the person punished. With enough people, I hope it will be less of an issue, but this makes me a bit more skeptical.
*You can confirm all this data yourself with a combination of the Games Played leaderboard and searching on Twitter for those aliases (it helps if you follow Canto Delirium and you select "People you follow" and "All" in the search.... otherwise you're going to get a lot of unrelated news items).
Last edited by jere (2015-03-27 12:55:41)
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I'm also for the "don't blame the player if the system can be rigged" but at this point it feels more like a lack of sportmanship issue rather than a "is he cheating / going legit" one.
Whatever the decision, it will set some kind of guideline for the community growing.
And the bigger we become, the more we will find players in it just for the money ...
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Yeah, it does look like something is amiss here. One of those supposed-accomplice accounts registered during the last hour of the amulet contest. Both accounts have email addresses at the same domain. Both accounts played no games except against each other (and against CD's account) during the last hour of the contest.
Hopefully, CD will join us and describe the exploit in detail.
It doesn't look like he dropped the amulet over and over... just that he reliably played against one of these accomplice accounts over and over.
Which is perplexing, because I'd THINK there'd be a flurry of players right at the end that would make this hard.
Oh, I just figured out what he did... even if there was a flurry of other players.
Create an amulet game and wait for +30 seconds to pass (so the random timer is passed---the next game started WILL pull an opponent for you).
Create a game with your alt account and quickly join it from your second alt. Bingo, you're playing your alt account.
So... it seems like there were just few enough players that during that hour so no one else was starting a game during that 30 second period each time.
It seems like making the random range wider would help (a random time between 0 and 2 minutes). Obviously, that would keep the amulet-holder waiting longer, which is a nasty side-effect
The other thing is that the alt accounts could join/leave each other repeatedly during the 2 minutes, giving them a good chance of getting picked whenever the random timer is ready... so maybe a time delay isn't a solution here.
DAMMIT... collusion, you are the bane of my existence as a multiplayer game designer!
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What had happened was....
1. When holding the Amulet earlier in the day. I couldn't get a match. Even if I left the screen up for ten minutes, etc.
2. I started to wonder if any one was playing. Yet I was seeing updates on Canto. That other players were indeed playing. This got me to ask about a player count on the screen.
3. I started to share the game with some friends and we tried to figure out how to win an amulet then how to pass it in circles. We assumed that if there were three of us and whomever didn't hold an amulet would challenge the amulet holder and take the amulet. Then you would have a new person who didn't hold an amulet. That didn't work as the amulet holder sat there for minutes. At times we saw two or three games all for the same amount. $.01, which was strange. We assumed the game would just match up those users who started a game with the same amount.
4. Then I dropped the amulet. We assumed that the three of us and the two other people playing would give the 5 players we assumed needed to be playing for an amulet to be in play.
5. Two of us started a game where each player went all in each time. We figured the more number of games we could get in the better chance we had. I believe I won the first three games of this. After each win I dropped the amulet, while the 3rd player started a new game. I would join that game and we repeated the steps. All in game on first hand. After the game I noticed that I had won the amulet again.
6. We then assumed that the more games played in the quickest amount of time would work the best because The other people playing would battle for a while. If we dropped the amulet while they were still playing we felt like we had a chance to get it back, which was true.
Possible Fixes:
1. I still don't understand how the non held amulets are awarded. Pre-match where the winner would get them? Or post match if one was available?
2. I think cycling though which amulet is next picked up would solve a large chunk of the issue. If we had to cycle through the amulets it would have made it much harder to score the needed points.
3. The system should pick the dollar amount an amulet contest is worth, $.01-$5. When two people click on that amount that's the available amulet game.
4. The same could be used for Amulet holders. Where the dollar amounts of those games are already on the screen at a random interval.
5. 3 and 4 above could also make it easier for colusion, However the larger the game amount the larger the fear you would be playing someone else. Unless you leave quickly.
6. I also think there should be a Contest Bankrupt amulet, where the winner of the amulet loses all points on other amulets, however whoever wins the most points on this amulet still wins a prize, however it's just the lowest amount iE: $5. This amulet should then be automatically dropped, which I guess would not make it an amulet but more of a penalty button. This would create lots of drama and sadness.
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Caravan: So in the end were you holding onto the amulet while the other two played amulet games against you or were you dropping the amulet and picking it up again?
Jason: Regarding the question to Caravan, if it was the answer is first one then I'm pretty sure the leaderboards were lying to me at the end until it was too late to do anything.
What I saw with regular refreshes:
I lost the amulet to JA
JA dropped the amulet Caravan Picked it up and made 200 points
Caravan drops the amulet
From this point until I saw Caravan with the amulet ahead of me in points the amulet was always unheld
I tried joining a few .11c games during this time getting a wait screen each time. Thinking that I possibly sent them into an amulet game I would check to see if any amulets were held. None ever were.
I never noticed Caravans score increasing - (though it is possible that this went under my radar as I was focusing more on if it was held? This seems unlikely...)
At one point the server seemed to go down for a few seconds.
and then suddenly out of nowhere - bang Caravan held it and had more points than me, giving me no way to make a comeback.
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Caravan: So in the end were you holding onto the amulet while the other two played amulet games against you or were you dropping the amulet and picking it up again?
Dropping it. When when I won an amulet again it was that one.
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It sounds like awarding the amulets randomly instead of in prize order might be the solution to this exploit. Right now the top prize is the most contested, but also the easiest to get. He just won it, got 200 points, dropped it, and won it again repeatedly by playing quick games over and over. Random drops would solve this, since then the top amulet wouldn't be guaranteed. Even with 36 amulets, this tactic would work.
Random drops would also make the lower amulets easier to reach and more of a contest. Both of these test, the last amulet basically went to whoever had the best single run on it, without the amulet being passed around much.
If you're against random drops, then maybe a cooldown timer on each amulet would work. If an amulet is dropped by either using the drop button or a time out, the amulet can't be redistributed for like 20-30 minutes. Of course, this would also cause other issues, but it's just a suggestion...
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Yeah, handing them out in random order is easy to do and fixes a bunch of problems beyond just collusion, so I will do that.
HOWEVER...
It still seems like a colluder can get an advantage. Perhaps not through the drop-repeatedly trick, but simply through coordinating pairs of colluding opponents to ensure that a colluder is pulled. And even drop-repeatedly would help them rack up points evenly across all amulets, especially if they did it all week long.
Though it sounds like trying to pair with a colluder while holding the amulet is too scary with too much to lose if the pairing doesn't work out. If a stranger gets pulled instead of your colluder, and the stranger wins the amulet from you, it could be a long time before it ever gets dropped again. So the drop-and-repeat trick is more of a safe bet
The drop-repeatedly trick will be partly fixed by never setting 0 as the "number of users to skip" before the dropped amulet is given to someone. When there are too few active games, that number can get stuck at 0 currently, which means the colluding pair will get the amulet back next game.
Still, if it had a bottom of 5 game, the colluding pair would just play/quit five games repeatedly until they got the amulet.
The problem is that colluders can play as fast as they want and effectively bypass any kind of count-based delay scheme. Similarly, if the hand-out-delay is based on time, colluders playing repeated quick games will also be more likely to end a game at the right time.
Wait... why did we add a DROP AMULET button?
If you can't find an opponent and drop it after two hours, you still picked up 80 points on it (200 - 120).
Seems like removing the ability to drop simplifies the problem, because after the initial pickup, most amulets will be held and passed forever, so there will be no controlled way for a player to rack points through drop timing, etc.
Combined with the new limit on how many are handed out (based on active player pop), it should be okay not to have a DROP button.
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Also, I haven't paid the prizes yet.
Hopefully, we can keep this discussion going and find a solid solution. Then I'll pay the prizes on Monday.
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Wait... why did we add a DROP AMULET button?
I think the discussion was that the drop button would allow those that play during the off hours to have an alternative to simply wait around and watch their points decay when no one else is playing. It was also important when the initial amulet drop awarded 0 points, but that's since been changed.
Instead of removing the drop amulet button altogether, could you maybe disable it until a set amount of time has passed waiting for an opponent? Personally, that's how I've used the drop button. If I can't find a match after 30 minutes, I give up and drop it. So I'm not losing 120 points from just sitting around, but I'm also trying to join a match.
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What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours. Really, the legitimate use of dropping (outside of a strategy) is because you have to leave the game.
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What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours
I like this. I think you can't pick it up for 2 hours. But maybe you should be able to win it from someone during that time?
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6. I also think there should be a Contest Bankrupt amulet, where the winner of the amulet loses all points on other amulets, however whoever wins the most points on this amulet still wins a prize, however it's just the lowest amount iE: $5. This amulet should then be automatically dropped, which I guess would not make it an amulet but more of a penalty button. This would create lots of drama and sadness.
This is still my favorite fix.
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jere wrote:What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours
I like this. I think you can't pick it up for 2 hours. But maybe you should be able to win it from someone during that time?
Couldn't you just have your alt pick it up instead and pass it off to your main? I think dropping it should be more of an "I'm completely done with this for now" sorta thing.
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jasonrohrer wrote:Wait... why did we add a DROP AMULET button?
I think the discussion was that the drop button would allow those that play during the off hours to have an alternative to simply wait around and watch their points decay when no one else is playing. It was also important when the initial amulet drop awarded 0 points, but that's since been changed.
That's the reason. However, I remember Claspa and some others have made the suggestion that even though the forced-drop timer (2 hours) should count down between amulet games, point decay should NOT happen while actively searching for a game. After all, if you're playing legitimately, what can you do to maintain and increase your score other than search for a game? If I've selected Amulet Game and am stuck on the Waiting for Opponent screen, I've done everything right. It's not my fault there aren't enough active players to draw me into a game.
However, I have a feeling changing that rule (i.e. making it so points do NOT decay while searching for an amulet game opponent) might have a knock-on effect elsewhere (especially at off-peak times), so I'd be OK with leaving things as they are.
What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours. Really, the legitimate use of dropping (outside of a strategy) is because you have to leave the game.
A good idea, if you decide to keep the Drop Amulet button. However, I would extend it to not being able to get ANY amulets-- and maybe for more than 2 hours (again, to prevent abuse during off-peak times).
I also think there should be a Contest Bankrupt amulet, where the winner of the amulet loses all points on other amulets, however whoever wins the most points on this amulet still wins a prize, however it's just the lowest amount iE: $5. This amulet should then be automatically dropped, which I guess would not make it an amulet but more of a penalty button. This would create lots of drama and sadness.
An interesting idea we hadn't thought of before. But, since the goal of the amulet contest is to attract and hopefully retain lots of new players, pissing people off is probably not the way to do it. If this happened to me, I would become very soured on the game.
Also, it would discourage people from trying to play lots of games. Again, Jason wants people to try the game and hopefully be motivated to play lots of games-- not stop for fear of receiving some negative penalty.
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5. Two of us started a game where each player went all in each time.
I think this is the salient part. I'd like to argue this is NOT collusion, rather it's a perfectly reasonable way to play Cordial Minuet. Playing a series of one-round games against the same person for 1c is basically the same as playing a 'normal' game for 10c. I think what's the problem here is the way amulet points are distributed: 200 points for last man standing, regardless of whether you won or the game length or profit or stakes. It's completely at odds with the normal incentives in the game.
Of course with lots of people playing this is no longer a sure-fire strategy to win an amulet, but there's still some encouragement to play fast games. The whole idea behind the amulet contest was that when you get the amulet you have to try to maximise the length of your winning streak, and that's just not the case with too few active people and with the amulet dropping.
I suggest, in addition to the lockout period (completely support), a small penalty for dropping an amulet, say 20 points, because if you don't drop it you'll accrue a penalty until you win your next game - consider how long that takes. But, it probably makes no difference once people are forced to hang onto amulets to win them.
Last edited by .. (2015-03-28 03:48:24)
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What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours.
+1 for this solution. It was something I had thought of myself but never got around to making a post. Im glad to see it was brought up.
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What you could also do is make the drop really count: you drop it and you can't get it again for 2 hours. Really, the legitimate use of dropping (outside of a strategy) is because you have to leave the game.
I actually suggested this is the last tournament thread... It completely fixes the collusion issue with dropping amulets, and still allows you to not lose points if you get the amulet during a downtime.
I like this. I think you can't pick it up for 2 hours. But maybe you should be able to win it from someone during that time?
That would still allow for collusion though, although it would be limited to the total number of accounts you have access to. Dropping amulets is really only something that should be done when you are ready to stop playing, or you can't find matches to the point where the cost/reward of keeping the amulet is not in your favor. If this is not true, you shouldn't have any incentive to drop it. I really think that if you want to drop an amulet, you should not be able to pick up any amulet or participate in amulet matches for a certain period of time.
Actually though, I am also okay with just removing the drop amulet button. It seems like the most simple/obvious solution, and as long as there aren't too many really bad downtimes during the launch period, the problem of being stuck with an amulet and not being able to find any games shouldn't be too bad. It also incentives people who win amulets when lots of other people are playing, which is probably a good thing.
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Since we're talking about exploits again here's an exploit of the current system that I think would be very likely pick up an amulet even with the suggested modifications here (with Caravan Disturber's suggestion one of the accounts would no doubt pick up the penalty amulet though). Have 2 accounts spam games with each other, each time they check if they got into a game with each other, if so leave immediately. If they are not against each other whichever one is in a game has a decent chance of being in an amulet game, so play some strategy which has some decent chance of winning, and is fairly quick (I'd guess 30% should be fine and achievable with a bot, I would try the following: approximate a Nash equilibrium for the game where you always give your opponent the column with the lowest maximum number and then always go allin in the first betting round [if I've done my maths right this only has 1800 information sets per player so it's easy to play close to equilibrium for a computer]), if it's two human accounts the humans can just play normally when they're not against each other, but bots would work better because bots don't need to sleep. With just two account you're best off dropping amulets upon receiving them and continuing to spam games with each other, but with three accounts you're best off holding the amulet and spamming games with the other two accounts so you have a very good chance of getting into a game with one of them.
I think the above shows the fundamental problem here is not about dropping amulets. The fundamental problem is that the parts of the games rewarded with amulets are the beginning and the end, not the middle; play 20 games in the time another plays one and you've got 20 times the chance of picking up an amulet. Since it is trivially easy for colluding accounts to play a ridiculously large number of games against each other, it is very easy for colluders to get a large advantage. My original suggestion for handing out dropped amulets did not have this issue, so I'll suggest it again here. When an amulet is dropped record which games are in progress and count how many there are (call it n), start a counter at 0 and every time one of *these* games (i.e only games started BEFORE the amulet is dropped) is finished increment the counter by 1. If upon doing so the counter reaches floor(n/2) then award the last one standing in that game the amulet. If you're happy to add some randomness to it though, it is simpler just to assign the amulet to a random game in progress at the time of the drop (by which I mean "dropped into player pool" of course rather than "dropped by a player" of course). There is a slight incentive in this system to drawing out a games you're winning, and to leaving games when you're behind, but they are slight (I'm not sure it would be worth paying the leaving penalty and forfeiting the chance to win an amulet if the game has already been assigned an amulet for example) and don't provide advantages to colluders.
In fact even if you did just implement this suggestion for dropped amulets, my strategy above still looks pretty good, as my colluding accounts are going to get to play much more games against people holding their amulets (and as noted before they can get a very good chance of getting in games with each other once they get an amulet with 3 accounts). My suggestion would be that each time an amulet game starts, pick a non-amulet game in progress at random and have the last one standing in that game become an amulet challenger. When amulet challengers go to the new game page, they have an option for amulet games like amulet holders, if they select it they get paired with an amulet holder who has also selected amulet game (or they wait if there are none). If an amulet challenger does not select amulet game for 15 minutes they lose the status and a new random game is selected for an amulet challenger to be chosen from. When an amulet is dropped into the player pool, it is given to a waiting amulet challenger, and 2 games in progress are selected to take an amulet challenger from. Amulet games would all be at some fixed stake and non-amulet games at *any* stake could be chosen to select the amulet challenger from.
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Amulet games would all be at some fixed stake and non-amulet games at *any* stake could be chosen to select the amulet challenger from.
I'm not going to comment on Storeroom's suggested fixes, because my poor non-math non-programming brain simply cannot do a proper assessment of them.
But, I think his suggestion from the line I quoted has grabbed onto something that nagged at me during the first test contest. Normal behaviour in CM involves putting X amount of money at stake in order to make X (minus tribute) amount of money. You can never win more than what you stand to lose.
But during the amulet contest, that was not the case. You could win $100 by investing pennies! That would explain the behaviour we saw during both contests, when people started penny games and bet and accepted crazy all-ins on the first pick.
With Storeroom's suggestion, amulet games could be set at a more meaningful stake, say one or two dollars. Those games would probably be hard-fought, using more conventional strategies, without insane, arbitrary all-ins.
Granted, you're still investing only a small fraction of what you could potentially win (e.g. $2 to win a $36 amulet, not that you'd know what type of amulet you could potentially receive), but I still think the play in amulet matches would tilt more towards the conventional rather than the insane. The question is: would normal matches still involve reckless play at very low stakes, as players try to be the last person standing as often as possible (and thus get "Amulet Challenger" status)?
Of course, to some players, this fixed stake (be it $1 or $5) might still be seen as pennies, and to new players, it might seem like the game is strong-arming them into putting more money at stake than they're comfortable with. But it might go towards breaking the "valuable penny mentality" phenomenon that has been discussed previously. I know that in the future, the game will need more players willing to play at $1+ stakes.
Finally, there's the issue that the core game might change too much with this "Amulet Challenger" idea. This will be most people's first experience with the game, and Jason has said he doesn't want the game to look that much different during the contest. The whole amulet thing should just be "floating beneath the surface," as I recall.
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