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Maybe you could explain to me exactly what they did... Clearly they were mounted or they wouldn't have needed 7 meks.

Nehrie

The racer died and left one mektoub, respawned at a point further in the race and traded mektoubs with an alt at that respawn point.

ah ahahahahahahahhahahhahahha

Thank you Placio :)

Nehrie

Thanks Placio, now I understood how to cheat. I did not know that before, indeed such behaviour is so alien to me that I would not have the idea to act that way.

We may agree that such behaviour is outright cheating, and should be punished. A possible defense against such abuse might be marking a race as aborted once the player dies and is not rezzed at the same spot. But in my eyes, that would be insufficient.

A better idea would be to mark the last waypoint, and in case a player dies and resurrects in a different region than his/her mek without aborting the race, s/he should be marked as a cheater and excluded from mek races, for a year, and indefinitely in case of repetition, along with removal of 10 levels of every skill above lvl 100. That would teach cheaters.

Daomei, I was not questioning the validity of Auro's observation, just that, I my opinion a new thread should have been made for it. given the nature of the conversation to that point it would be easy to have his point lost in the mix.

Personally, through my observations network conditions have more bearing on the rubberbanding ect, the the hardware of the PC used. During the race I turned off sound and adjusted my graphic settings in an attempt to reduce the number of server calls, just to try and reduce those issues, it my be a placibo effect, but seemed to help.

In regards to the methods used to cheat, it may have been impossable to trigger a forced abandonment of the race due to Deathporting, NH, or the Mara TP, the way Kara and Kami did. It is my susspision that those events share some coding with the portals themselves, and seperating them out might be to difficult.
Giving that freeing a mount or TPing with Kara or Kami pacts caused you to be kicked from the race, by extension acts that would cause simmular results should not have been used. It is a shame that some people go to such extreams to "win".

Fatecity: I hope the Event Managers, CSR and Devs are reading this thread and are reflecting possible changes in order to improve the game, to limit abuse, and to punish malevolent abusers. Equally, creation of more balanced conditions for players from different continents could be an issue for further development.

We should never forget that devs. EM, and CSR put a lot of effort and manpower into these projects to create enjoyable events for all players. Those who are spoiling that by cheating deserve contempt. We all should collaborate to improve such events.

lol OMG! Let's hang them in the streets. Someone get a rope! lol

Come on... Clearly there are two different concepts of the race.

I think the point is to get the fastest time. Just it should have been made clear that the same mek has to go with a person the whole way through the race. However if your mek dies then you can't get another.

We should just make it if your mek dies the race is over for you. Or if you die. Simple enough.

Still think it would be fun to have another race with no holds barred. I bet some time could be got down to 15 minutes.

Think of it. Using teleportation, respawn, speed, every trick you can... I would so love to see that. Is there a way that the event team could just tape each person as they race? Then put it up on youtube or something. Would be so funny. :)))

Anyway clearly Daomei you and I had a different idea when we saw the race. I believe we both thought it was one mek and one person going every step of the way. But it doesn't make what they did illegal. In one way it shows what good players they really are. There should be a format for that. For the truly adept players. After all this game is for them too.

Surely, there is a peaceful solution other than a lynch mob at midnight with burning torches.

Maybe the people who did the respawning should be judged seperately for the results of this race. Have two results. Surely the data of the race could show who had done it if someone called that particualr person into question. And maybe if there was not a punishment like banning for life, purging their character, frozen for a year type of thing they would just come forward and say, "Yes I did this."

Maybe those people could get a special prize like for innovation or creative thinking. Maybe even eleminate their results from the race that ran with one mek.

I don't know but surely their is an amiacable way to approach this.

Nehrie

Your point, Nehrie, is interesting, but, as I fear, irrealistic and, with all due respect, somewhat naive.

All those methods using "shortcuts" are opportunistic and parasitic, resting upon the supposition that all or most of others do not use the "clever shortcut". Otherwise, the use of it would be useless.

Cheating is malevolent, parasitic, abusive. That has nothing to with witchhunt or similar. If there could be two kinds of race, one with use of all "shortcuts" and one without, it would require that all cheaters publish their ways of "shortcutting" before starting the race. Everybody, then, would have equal chances to die, trade mounts etc. which, under my opinion, is a braindead way to run the race. But I fail to see that any of the cheaters ever will voluntarily lay open their methods. There may be others still not published, I don't know and I am not the fuck interested in such abuse.

In my opinion, any such vuln has to be reported in order to be removed, and never be used except for test purposes.

It is not a matter of different concepts, but a matter of getting unfair advantage. Otherwise it would be pointless to cheat.

ok, this has gone on and on, and there's a simple way to fix ALL cheating worries:

if you dismount for ANY reason (even death) you abandon the race.

i'm not sure if it's been over looked (though i think nehrie might have mentioned something along the same lines, maybe just not as blunt and clear.)

without this simple rule built in (if mounting and dismounting is a trackable action) the rules of the race will always be subject to abuse and debate.

again i did not take part in the race, but i've been reading every post on this thread with interest and at times even humor.

now that the best and most logical solution to the issue has been clearly and bluntly stated i can only hope that the EM's, CSR's, and dev's can work out a solution that will include this simple yet absolute solution.

just on the off chance you missed it:

if you dismount for ANY reason (even death) you abandon the race and must start over.

with this solution either you run the whole race without dying or you don't run the race, no room for cheating in any way if you must be mounted from start to finish.

unless we're told this is an impossible option from the em's, csr's, and dev's further discussion on the topic is rather mute at this point.

talk

You have to dismount your mek to travel through portals. I could only see keeping the same mek the whole race and trading, losing it or even player dying at all would make you dq.
Have any of yall played any other games besides Ryzom?? Just because you think something is cheating doesn't mean it is. Is this clearly spelled out or are you just trying to use logic to suit what you feel is morally right? Using game mechanics is not cheating regardless of how you feel if the rules are not clearly spelled out. I'm sure these players would have been banned or warned if they did violate the TOS and since none of us here are CSR who are we to say? Did they change the final results or did the winners win?
Do you want this game to continue to be a half filled sandbox or do you want it to progress?? People finding new ways to do things or even leveling up faster than you does not matter. This is a sandbox, remember? End game is not level 250, remember? Other people creating items or obtaining levels does not affect your game play if this is a sandbox. You are free to run your path so why impose YOUR ways on others? Close minded thinking is pushing players away and you can hope for steam all you want but how long will players stick around if you don't allow them to find new ways to have fun? Good luck on the future.

i forgot about that bones, i can't recall the last time i moved my mount, it's been full of stuff for so long and other storage options are too limited for me to empty it without creating another f2p storage alt, so i don't risk my precious limited storage space. (i don't think i've moved any of my animals in the last 3.9 years)

so here's the final solution for this problem in light of what i forgot.

have a single race for each major map: jungle, desert, forest, wastelands, lands of umbra. (lakes is out because each region connects to another via a portal, under spring, AoI, and nexus are out because they're so small)

each land has it's own leader board, and then for players that complete a race in each of the "minor" races a board that will have the combined times from each smaller race. more ways to win, and a way to totally prevent "cheating" with the simple coded rule that dismounting for any reason abandons the race.

problems solved (sorry lake lands, but with all those portals, it's just not possible {unless the dev's fix the strange thing that prevents a mounted player from using a portal, what's the differance between going through it mounted and having the mount on follow?})

ok that's all i have to say about this topic at this time.

talk

I cannot disagree more to what Bones wrote. If there is a loophole that does neither entitle nor make it justified to abuse them for unfair advantages.

And I also disagree to Talkirc that a technical restriction like making the race end before a portal would be a real solution.

There are a lot of things which cannot be prevented technically, like usage of bots, abusive language and behaviour etc., which are forbidden, though.

Beneath other things, it is also a matter of philosophy either to treat the playerhood as nursery infants or loonies who have to be hindered technically from every illicit action inside their cushioned playpen or padded cell, or sensible adults who take responsibility for the game and the community and have a sense for fair play.

I am aware e.g. that foul language is not appreciated, and discouraged in the chat and forum rules. Anyway there is no robot turning every "bad word" into a peep or so, and I am glad about. We have the responsibility and the freedom, and may face consequences in case of serious transgressions (while getting away with or without a warning in minor cases). That is what is making the game feeling lively and though I seldom use to swear in the chats and forums I enjoy that freedom.

Bones' opinion that cheating is not cheating but just using game mechanics sounds absurd to me and a call for a cushioned playpen or padded cell.

Ok, what is missing is a clear and unambiguous statement by the Event Team and the CSR explicitly banning and threatening with punishment any of those dirty tricks. It should not be to hard to formulate that in a way leaving no excuse open.

This is in reference to what talk said about disqualifying a person for dismounting.

As Bones said you need to dismount going through the portals. However, limiting the race to one region imho would take some of the fun out of the race.

Each mek has a particular signature. If you click on info each mek has a name. If you start the race with Cindy Lou Mek you should finish the race with Cindy Lou Mek.

I think the simple solution would be if the player or the mek dies then they are disqualified. Or as the race says "you have abandoned the race."

If the desire of the race is to have one mek and one player all the way through the race. This was not clearly stated in the rules. It said what you could not do it did not state what it wanted you to do. So what was stated was to get from point A to point B in the fastest time. And you can't use speed, teleport etc.

If the rules said clearly this is what we want without any deviation maybe then you could say that people had cheated.

Nehrie

...was it a mek race (like in the good old times) or a dp porting race (more like star trek) to get from start to end ?


Using multiple accounts sounds so oldscool.....

...did anyone try using inv- and speedeggs to beat a mek ?
What about using GM rights to port player and mek to the next checkpoint?
Or simply hacking the racelist?

.. I think I made my point....



p.s. personnally I think Mye is the real winner for trying so many times :-)