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Thread: Dear Community Team

  1. #1
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    Dear Community Team

    I am posting this here, as it takes longer than a week for you to answer emails, and this was all you had to say about the 6 of my provinces trying to find out why you deleted them:

    Hi there and apologies for the delay
    Your province was among several reported for abuse of the ambush bug. After an investigation we confirmed that this was so.
    The rules on exploits are clear and we've reinforced the message that this is unacceptable on the boards.
    We will not be returning the province to you nor discussing this further.
    Please let us know if we can assist you with any other matter.
    The Community Team.


    Here is my RE: email.

    Dear Community Team,

    If you care about your game, you’d read this.

    Hello. My name is Sean, and I have been a faithful Utopia player since elementary school. I have to be honest and admit that I am extremely disappointed in the way the game is currently being moderated. During my time playing the game, I have never cheated or tried to cheat. I play innocently and honestly. The only reason I began playing with HarsH CheeseS was because they play the game the same way. I must admit that I am not a huge part of the community, nor do I have omnipotent utopia knowledge, and nor do I read forums and keep up on what goes on.

    Ok, let me explain why I am disappointed. I had my province in sitting mode while we were at war. About.. 4 weeks ago, if I have any memory left, and our kingdom was at war. One of our non-monarch players was in charge of leading the war. As we were getting almost completely ambushed, he decided to fail the last of attacks to make it harder to ambush. Now let me defend there- it was his knowledge (and mine) that ambushes worked in this way- ambushing targets the most recent attack. Yes, call me a newb, but apparently it usually targets the most recent successful attack? I don’t know. I only picked Utopia back a couple ages ago after a break of several years (and same with the guy that was war commanding, if it’s important to this disappointment). But, it doesn’t say in the guide how it should work, so I guess it’s up for interpretation, trial , and error, for us who don’t know every detail of the game. Rant over. Sorry.

    When we started failing attacks, people told us that it was questionable, as ambushes were possibly bugged and not working as they were supposed to work. Therefore, we stopped immediately as we didn’t want to participate in questionable behavior. As we tried to learn more, such as asking Bishop and other unnamed leaders of alliances, we were called ‘assholes’ and ‘stupid and naïve’ for ‘pretending to not know.’ Apparently everyone playing the game is supposed to read forums. My bad.

    [P.s. When you sign up for the game, you don’t agree to anything saying that forums are the terms of gameplay or agree to play by them. Just saying you should probably fix that so you can stand behind holding people accountable for what’s in the forums.]

    Then, 6 of our provinces get deleted. Now, after reading up on the subject, I have a few problems with that that bring me to my disappointment:
    -Ambush bug is unconfirmed in the forum (I.E. mods don’t know if it’s actually bugged- it was reported and not investigated)
    -December 3rd, Sean posted that this bug was fixed “Ambush not targeting most recent army.” (this is a two-fold- it says that there is no bug because it was fixed, and it says that ambush targets most recent- not most recent successful)
    -Bishop posted one week before our war that ambush was working properly (I cannot find the post as I never visit the forums)
    -[23:12] <Hatred19> i didnt even know there was an ambush bug until i talked to moya
    [23:12] <Hatred19> then bishop explained it to me and said mad_scottish told him it was resolved (that’s from the person who reported us for “abusing the ‘bug’”)
    -I went to the create account page to look for terms- it gives you no terms and conditions of gameplay when you signup.

    I looked through the forums to see if they have any official thing that they can even use to back this and found game rules under forum -> browser game communities -> utopia -> game announcements -> game rules:
    Players (2)attempting to manipulate rules and (1)quirks of the game in ways (3)obviously not intended may be subject to deletion. Because of their nature, these types of circumstances are looked at on a case-by-case basis. (4)Users should avoid actions they believe are against the spirit and intent of the game.
    I’ll take this one at a time.
    1) Quirks. I’ll give it to you that bugs can be considered quirks.
    2) Attempting to manipulate. We were not attempting to manipulate a quirk because we didn’t know that there was a quirk. When we were told there was a possible quirk, we stopped doing what we were doing.
    3) Obviously. I spent 1 hour searching the forum to find the list of bugs. I found it as a link in someone’s post somewhere. 1 hour. Not something I do in my free time for fun for no reason.
    4) Users should avoid actions they believe are against the spirit and intent of the game. Yeah, exactly. We stopped as soon as we found out.
    *) These aren’t even official rules of gameplay. Just a random post in the forum.

    I’m not the most involved player of the Utopia community. I just like to play the game. Deleting 6 provinces from my kingdom when we were having fun and playing with integrity takes all the fun out of it and is a pretty ****ty way to treat your players

    Feel free to be mad at me or disagree. What I’m trying to say that if you are going to hold people accountable for certain standards, you need to make them clear. Otherwise, people who are trying to play the game righteously are going to get deleted and hate the game. They try to play the right way, and then you delete them. Along with that, I just read Thundergore's new post today saying that he wants the community to continue to grow and that new users shouldn't feel threatened or whatever. Goes right against how you are treating people ingame.

    **Also, I agree that cheaters should not be tolerated in gameplay. Please don't turn this thread into a hate page- that's not the point of the post.

  2. #2
    Forum Fanatic octobrev's Avatar
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    you top players are all the same. quit your cheating!
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  3. #3
    Enthusiast Doom Scythe's Avatar
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    You know, I've been playing this game for some time and all I've got to say is that 90% of the people who 'stumbled' upon a bug are actually those who exploit them, knowingly.

  4. #4
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    Hmm.. somehow I dont quite get why anyone thinks to have an advantage by failing attacks. So you sacrifice a general to make a failed attack and the ambusher has to sacrifice a general to make a failed ambush before making the real ambush.

    In the end you'll always use 1 gen on every attack because you then need 1 for the failed attack and 2 more for your own ambush.

    Why not, if that is what people want to do in their wars ?

  5. #5
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    ^ what he said. it isn't an exploit. The only thing it does is lower effective max offense for the person who failed an attack and the person who ambushes. the fact that this is considered "chearting" is news to me. especially when mehul had deemed it tactics.

    I know, I know. this isn't mehul's game anymore. it was knocked unconscious, dragged back to the cave and raped like a cavewoman into the crap it is now. but nonetheless, shouldn't previous 'tactics' still be tactics? and if they aren't, shouldn't the programmers fix the game so said tactics don't work anymore?

  6. #6
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    I'd also like to note that this used to be called "Ambush blocking" and has additionally been used to prevent ambush+TM or multiple ambushes from the same person as you must expend 3 generals before doing your ambush, making it impossible to get another attack in. This has been around since Ambush was introduced to the game years ago and I don't understand how this can be labeled a bug or exploit these days. If Ambush blocking is an exploit then so is chaining.

  7. #7
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    ambush blocking was removed from the game because it unfairly let province 1 ambush an ambush of province 2 multiple times via failing, killing off province 2's offense. Since that is no more, it's moot to talk about. what happened before it was fixed this age was you could ambush failed hits. This is different in that you've never been able to ambush failed hits, only hits that took acres. By exploiting this bug, kingdoms would chain a province, and the province would be unable to ambush 4 times, only once due to bounce hits.
    Last edited by Nuriho; 30-04-2010 at 12:33. Reason: spelling

  8. #8
    At One With The Keyboard Luth's Avatar
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    in mehul's code ambush never went after failed attacks, it only went after the last SUCCESSFUL attack made against you by that province. in the new code there have been so many ambush bugs, some have been fixed, some have not, including the ambush of failed attacks.

    So I don't know where you got the idea that it's "always" been this way Tamer. because it has not.
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  9. #9
    Post Fiend aposai's Avatar
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    I have fought against Hars Cheeses a couple of times, our wars were always fair, in account of those wars I hardly expect them to exploit a bug knowingly. And as somebody said this event was once considered tactics, and it is now a bug exploit due to a screw up in the code, who is here to blame for?

    Players using tactics that should be working, or coders who cannot do their job properly?
    Utopia: a "Mess"ive multiplayer strategy game since Mehul sold it

  10. #10
    dingy
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    For goodness sake, there are so many problems with Ambush, just remove it from the game.

  11. #11
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    so Luth, one system favored the ambusher, while the new system favors the attacker. that hardly seems to count as cheating. that'd be like claiming all elite armies were cheating after the transition from $4000 elites to <$1000 elites.

    either way, I'd be inclined to blame the omac team for this. not people who 'abused' an 'ambush bug'. especially when you look at your thread of unsolved bugs.

  12. #12
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    @Doom Scythe
    cool

    @TommyB
    Yes, failing 3x after a hit prevents someone from making a trad and an ambush (or at least it did last age)

    @Nuriho
    What i'm understanding is that old times, it targetted only successful. More recently, they targetted most recent whether or not fail. I'm not quite sure what actually happens vs. what is supposed to happen. Do the coders even know what's supposed to happen? The guide doesn't say.

    @Luth
    Exactly. It's so vague, and nobody knows what's supposed to happen and what does happen. So how can they delete people for acting on how they think it's working/supposed to work? (Also, quotes are usually used to take someone's exact words. He never said "always")

    @aposai
    Thanks, Aposai :-) They say that it is so clear and obvious. Really?? I missed it. And looks like a lot of people have.

  13. #13
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    Too many words, couldn't read it all. Try brevity.
    Alas, poor Utopia! For 10 years I knew ye well.

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sean1 View Post
    I am posting this here, as it takes longer than a week for you to answer emails, and this was all you had to say about the 6 of my provinces trying to find out why you deleted them:
    Maybe, i don't know, you're only supposed to have 1 province!? No one gets deleted for failing attacks to prevent ambushes. Provs get deleted because they are (partially) run by scripts, x-logged or are multies.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yadda9To5 View Post
    Maybe, i don't know, you're only supposed to have 1 province!? No one gets deleted for failing attacks to prevent ambushes. Provs get deleted because they are (partially) run by scripts, x-logged or are multies.
    I say "my" because they are in my kingdom and are my kingdommates and friends. And, yes. We DID get deleted for failing attacks. My province isn't even one of the ones that got deleted, but deleting them is the same as deleting me.

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