France Bloodbowl: 2150 coach, 7000 teams, 17500 games played

[christer]

FUMBBL doesn't really have problems with people forging results (or at least that's what I think )

However, there are other types of cheating:

Multiple accounts
Description:
Some people create multiple accounts and use these to play recovery games against themselves. They can also use this extra account as a "feeder" for their "real" teams.

Detection:
Look for players who play against a very small number of opponents.
Compare ratings in the games.
Check casualty and touchdown counts.
Look at concession rate.

Common excuse when confronted:
This person is my friend/cousin/roommate and I'm teaching him/her to play.

Problem:
It's very difficult to be sure if they are telling the truth or not. It's not like you can actually check...

Resolution:
FUMBBL has a rule regarding "learner" games, telling people to find other coaches to play their friends.

Comment:
An application to help in detecting this type of cheating seems possible.

Dropped games
Description:
Due to the nature of the javabbowl application, it is possible to simply disconnect when your opponent succeeds with something unlikely. This will force the game to be reloaded and the turn

Detection:
Log and look for patterns.

Common excuses:
"My internet connection sucks."

Problem:
Alot of ISPs truly do suck and again, it's very hard to know for sure if the disconnect was intentional or not.

Resolution:
Arguably, if you do get disconnected unintentionally, it should happen at random times and not only when you have something to gain. So, look for people who always gain when they disconnect.

Comment:
This problem can be reduced by reworking how the client saves games. SkiJunkie has this on his todo list so there's light at the end of this particular tunnel..

These two are the major ones we have to deal with in FUMBBL and I'm sure France BloodBowl has to deal with these kind of problems too. How do you deal with them?

-- Christer

[TiMuN]

Nice report there, christer.

We were suffering from the same problems over at NetBowl League.
Plus, there is this growing number of people playing from public connection places, like 'cybercofeeshops' (call it what you like), so we had several issues with a couple of those places, and asked them to organize their own leagues, as they have shown they have sufficient people as to make one of their own.

As you said, christer, they were starting gobbo and halfling teams to play their A teams, then, play their friends so they can be powered up, and tell us they really like to play goblins because they are fun. We ruled you could only play two matches to a certain team, and not in a row, so some people even create three teams .. even with the same email address as registering data.

We had this problem about cheating results. Firstly if was with casualties and skills chosen. No ageing was shown on many many matches, so we had to code the ageing and skill rolls through the web. It worked really nice, but then we had the injuries problem. No one seemed to be kill in a match. Plenty of lower injuries, but no serious wounds on a 13 casualties match seemed quite out of reality.

We are now thinking about restricting ip access too. So a coach can only subscribe two teams, not play one another, and only manage to enter data and match reports from the same ip they had registered. That makes following of different people from same places really easy. But still, it doesn't prevent multiple personalities. (While people with dinamic ip connections could not play the league)

Another aproach, and would probably be easy to implement on our league site is to filter so, you can't play teams with 40+ or 40- TR, so you'll play only your level teams. Thus, then, there will be no recovering from a casualty-full match.

About the program used, NetBowl saves situation of a match on a disconnection, so we had no problems with that. Works peer to peer, with the posibility that others can see matches connectiong to one of the players acting as server. It also features anotations on player achievements, team achievements, weather, gate, etc .. so it generates a final txt file, that we asked every coach to enter through a very complex match report form. Once the match is over, one of the coaches enter the whole match report, writes new achievements, checks for kills, and adds the txt file, then it is sent to the other coach personal page, so he can validate the match report. If it's not correct, the coach can modify the report, and send it back to the previous coach.

We ruled that a team couldn't play another match untill the previous match report is validated from the other coach. That makes some problems, since they seem to forget this, and players who aren't very active, tend to forget this, and thus, there is this other team locked waiting for validation (sometimes, we have to do it, the comish, acting like we were the missing coaches)

That's probably about it all .. we have to tweak the system for some of the effects of the handicap table, like the one giving you an extra mvp, so you can select a new skill (the web can throw different dice rolls for that, so the result you got on the match and the skill or trait chosen, could not be possible to pick when the web gets the results)

[Tim]

These are the same old problems (and same lame excuses) we had in the OLBBL back when i still was a commish there.

But there were other problems as well, that seem are already solved with the newer databse based leagues:
- incorrect teamsheets (TR, etc.)
- strange skill development
- SPP falling from heaven
...

So who says technology is bad

[Grumbledook]

ah its all automated at fumbbl, javabowl generates the results and both coaches upload, as soon as one coach uploads both teams are blocked from playing until the match report has been registered from both coaches, all the injuries and spp are in the match report so they can't get out of them and the website updates the rosters and does all the skill and aging rolls