Limit point exchange for cooks to reduce harvesting in quads

[Mr Changsha]

Not keen...

1. Some cooks play well. There are many reasons why a player might be a cook other than them being completely rubbish.
2. It would be unfair to limit a paying member's game choice.
3. If a cook IS HAPPY TO LOSE vast numbers of games against a top player then bully for him.
4. From my perspective, if you are going to restrict cooks, then I would think cadets, privates and corporals are next in line. About half the members at that point.

[FarangDemon]

Although point 1 is hilarious, I wish to address a different point.

3. If a cook IS HAPPY TO LOSE vast numbers of games against a top player then bully for him.

Maybe you are on the other side of the looking glass mirror, but this means you actually WANT a system where the person that gets to the top has to focus on playing cooks.

You are in the vast minority of the site. See the poll.

http://www.conquerclub.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=70978&start=0

And if you think coming up with a farming proof system is an intractable problem you're not even kidding yourself. People will always be whining about whatever they want to whine about, but they will be whining about a system that does not encourage farming because it does not reward harvesting techniques. You play your peers to get ahead, period.

[Artimis]

Farang, it is the players choice how well or how badly they play. Don't go restricting a players choice of map just because of how many points they lose, that is why I put forward this modification for your suggestion.

[FarangDemon]

Farang, who do you think should play against the lower ranked players? It seems that you feel that anyone playing against a cook 1v1 is harvesting.

You are avoiding the topic. Please discuss the merits of my suggestion rather than make faulty assumptions about how you think I feel about unrelated things.

This sug bug is about high ranked players targeting cooks in quads games on difficult maps like Waterloo. The data shows it is a proven harvesting technique. Win 60, lose 0. Post on topic if you believe that this is not a harvesting technique, in other words, a risk-free way to gain points from inexperienced players and inflate the scores of the farmers.

Otherwise it is obvious that your off-topic postings are merely an effort to distract readers away from an argument that you oppose and yet cannot win by reasoned discussion.

If data showed top ranked players playing against cooks 1 on 1 will tend to gain points over time, I would allege that it is indeed harvesting. I'm not sure that is possible and have not researched it. Lack researched the same thing with New Recruits instead of cooks and decided it was a harvesting technique and made it illegal.

Lack kept his mind open and used numbers to make a decision. That is what I also advocate here and for research into any type of harvesting technique. Your opinions seem to be based on feelings instead of measurements - that is why you make no attempt to analyze or contest the mathematical facts behind this harvesting technique yet you continue to rail against the suggestion, blindly trolling off-topic.

[FarangDemon]

Farang, it is the players choice how well or how badly they play. Don't go restricting a players choice of map just because of how many points they lose, that is why I put forward this modification for your suggestion.

Definitely if subsets of the cook population could be identified as non-harvestable by a particular harvesting technique, the corresponding map restrictions should not be in place for those cooks.



I like the spirit of your suggestion - it acknowledges the efficacy of this harvesting technique and attempts to stop it. If data shows that cooks who have played 100 games were not susceptible anymore to farming by high ranks in these sorts of games, then I would agree with your suggestion. However, you have not presented any evidence that this is the case.

Show me the numbers and I will agree with any suggestion like this. Again, it is a good suggestion and I'm not expecting you to do the research yourself to prove it to me, as this would take a long time. The data I used was easy to find because I did not discriminate among different kinds of cooks or look into their game histories.

[JOHNNYROCKET24]

When I read the various restrictions on new recruits, those appeared to be put in place at least partially because those players were not returning to the site. If a player is a cook, they are obviously still playing on the site, so why should they be limited as to what they can play?

On a side note, I recommend you send a mass PM (via the BCC button) to all those cooks in the games you examined and send them to wacicha and his Society of Cooks. That should improve their scores.

prevent players from over 3K to play any player under 1K, but allow players under 1K to play anyone. This will prevent players like sjnap who seeks out cooks only and joins freestyle team games with his teamates and prey against unknowledged players that dont understand the logic of 3/4 players making their moves all together at the same time and in even some cases, the same player making all the moves for the entire team.

[ronc8649]

i dont need to read the comments in this thread to know what it is all about.

conquer club is becoming a wierd map club. it is pitiful.

[sailorseal]

My friend a cook is sitting right next to me crying!

[Incandenza]

Let me start by saying that I don't like restrictions. I understand putting restrictions on the community's gaming interaction with ?'s as a business decision, but anything beyond that starts to smack of elitism of varying stripe.

Besides, restrictions are a slippery slope, proven out by the fact that some people want to extend the protection given new recruits to cooks. What next, cadets? Privates? Higher? Then what? Maybe we should just get rid of freestyle, that's certainly the key to point gain for many many top players. And while we're at it, Waterloo simply has to go, 'cause unless you've played a hundred games on it you'll never win. Maybe team games should be next. After all, it's pretty unfair for a well-coordinated, experienced team (especially if they're communicating via MSN or, god forbid, in person or on the phone) to play against people that have never been on the same team before. And let's just go ahead and ban clickable maps. And BOB. Hell, let's stop giving out points so no one has to feel bad. You see where I'm going with this? No system will ever be completely fair. Whenever there is potential for exploiting unfairness, people will exploit it. It's simply a matter of degree.

Another point: to say that any given concept in sugs and bugs has wide community support, or to classify anyone's position on this matter as being in the vast minority, is a complete fallacy. A hundred people could be in here clamoring for change, and it would be but a mote in the storm of the overall CC concept.

The big point I'd like to make is this: rather than trying to revise the scoreboard to something different but equally flawed (and considerably more restrictive, which again, is not a good thing), why not agitate for a sortable scoreboard? Or simpler yet, when looking at the scoreboard, just screen out the people above you that play a different game? Given the variety of maps and settings on CC, any two given people can be playing what's essentially a completely different game. No scoreboard will ever be able to reflect that variance accurately, so it would be nice to be able to have an overall scoreboard, say, then one for freestyle, one for sequential, one for dubs, etc, based on a percentage of games played.

[Blinkadyblink]

FarangDemon, it seems that you have decided that farming must be stopped at any cost and that however we choose to stop it is automatically justified. I disagree. Farming is a problem, almost everyone agrees to that, but it is not nearly bad enough to justify limiting cooks' freedom to play on whatever map they want. If cooks don't want to play, and likely be farmed, on certain maps, they don't have to. Unlike new recruits, they have the experience to know about farming and avoid farmers if they want to. The only time this suggestion would have any effect, then, is when a cook does want to play on a difficult map, knowing that he may be farmed. Thus this suggestion will only stop the farming of those cooks who are willing to risk being farmed. With this in mind, my question is what's in it for the cooks? It seems that the only beneficiaries of this would be high ranking non-farmers who could move up a few spots on the scoreboard by taking away the cooks' right to play where they want.

p.s. Why not limit the map choices of the high ranks, say colonel and above, who actually commit the farming, rather than the low-ranking victims?

[thezepman]

When I read the various restrictions on new recruits, those appeared to be put in place at least partially because those players were not returning to the site. If a player is a cook, they are obviously still playing on the site, so why should they be limited as to what they can play?

On a side note, I recommend you send a mass PM (via the BCC button) to all those cooks in the games you examined and send them to wacicha and his Society of Cooks. That should improve their scores.

prevent players from over 3K to play any player under 1K, but allow players under 1K to play anyone. This will prevent players like sjnap who seeks out cooks only and joins freestyle team games with his teamates and prey against unknowledged players that dont understand the logic of 3/4 players making their moves all together at the same time and in even some cases, the same player making all the moves for the entire team.

prevent (high ranked) premium players from joining freestyle team games started by non-premium players. nothing against you snjapy. although, hopefully im representing my clan well

[Artimis]

Farang, I said 100 because I deem it to be a reasonable number, I certainly don't want it to go any higher as this would make onerous target to achieve for all the Freemiums that play here. I think that even 100 games may be too high for Freemium players, so maybe a duel restriction of 100/35 for Premium/Freemium players? The point being I don't want to discourage players from playing, especially if they suddenly can't play their favourite maps any more. So I think this next point has more merit:

prevent players from over 3K to play any player under 1K, but allow players under 1K to play anyone. This will prevent players like sjnap who seeks out cooks only and joins freestyle team games with his teamates and prey against unknowledged players that dont understand the logic of 3/4 players making their moves all together at the same time and in even some cases, the same player making all the moves for the entire team.

Fortunately e_i_pi has already put forward an excellent suggestion that would work along those lines, it's on the third page of this forum under the thread entitled Suggestion: Ranked gaming system. I consider that a far better suggestion than the one outlined in this thread, but the mods don't seem so keen on it because Private games would be unrestricted by that suggestion.

[FarangDemon]

Farming is a problem, almost everyone agrees to that, but it is not nearly bad enough to justify limiting cooks' freedom to play on whatever map they want.

They don't need to be barred from playing in those maps. Just make any game that fits the description of point harvesting automatically become a zero points game.

With this in mind, my question is what's in it for the cooks?

A scoring system where you can't get to the top by farming. One that measures skill and not farming techniques.

[Incandenza]

With this in mind, my question is what's in it for the cooks?

A scoring system where you can't get to the top by farming. One that measures skill and not farming techniques.

1. This scoring system you speak of is a fantasy. Given the wide variety of maps and game types, there are quite a few different "skills" on display at the top of the scoreboard. And by top, I don't mean the top ten, I mean a more representative sample, like the top 1000. Focusing on the top one or top ten is counterproductive to your aims.

2. I'm reasonably confident that the average cook doesn't give a shit about scores. Otherwise, they wouldn't be cooks.

[Joodoo]

With this in mind, my question is what's in it for the cooks?

A scoring system where you can't get to the top by farming. One that measures skill and not farming techniques.

1. This scoring system you speak of is a fantasy. Given the wide variety of maps and game types, there are quite a few different "skills" on display at the top of the scoreboard. And by top, I don't mean the top ten, I mean a more representative sample, like the top 1000. Focusing on the top one or top ten is counterproductive to your aims.

2. I'm reasonably confident that the average cook doesn't give a shit about scores. Otherwise, they wouldn't be cooks.

I think another point to consider is experience. Just because someone is a cook doesn't mean they don't have experience. I've played with several cooks (on my team) in team games before and their strategy is not bad at all. New Recruits are inexperienced (except for multis) so it's practically impossible for them to win against any high-ranked player. But cooks have experience, so they still have that ability to beat high ranked players (with good dice and other factors considered, and I'm sure that can happen, especially in team games).