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1. Why is it that if digging up the Grail before visiting all obelisks is forbidden, "jumping" into the dark is allowed?
Why do you even need to visit all obelisks to dig up the grail? Let's look at the rules: 5.12. The Grail can be dug up after 5 weeks of gameplay.
2. In general, why is Dimension Door not banned in online play? After all, obtaining it almost guarantees victory! I would ban it, but leave Flight, because Flight is only possible over already explored terrain. Or perhaps Flight should be banned too. Because these spells allow you to fly over any obstacles, monsters, and enemy heroes without fighting them!
The problem is that you haven't played, and don't play online. Especially HL maps. You would understand why. Through your own experience. It doesn't guarantee anything on its own. You sound like the WCL guys who have spent their whole lives playing without flight or DD.
Now look at what you wrote: DD means almost victory, but flight does not. Fine, we find Angel Wings and fly everywhere, no problem? But for DD, you actually need 20-25 mana. And according to the rules, it can only be used once. On HL maps, twice—and even then only with expert air magic. By the way, there's your answer as to why they use it. So that there aren't dates like in computer games, e.g., 5.1.1, 10.1.1, etc. And of course, this enriches the game. All sorts of game cuts change it—in the vast majority of cases, not for the better
Added after 49 minutes
Regarding technical measures, the following are required: switching to playing on HD mod version 3 with password-protected saves; even better would be to password-protect the random maps themselves, and even more: it would be good to save tournament maps and saves in some new format whose structure is kept secret. Simultaneously, it would be good to develop (perhaps as an add-on to the HD mod) tools for conducting online games instead of the existing Hamachi and others—tools that work reliably, are easy to configure, do not conflict with other software, etc.
Again, who is going to deal with this, and for free? Thanks to Baratorch for what he does and his attempts to polish the ND mod. Although I think the mod will protect against 95% of cases of unwanted intrusion into the game, it's still not a panacea for cheating, as there are disassemblers and various debuggers with which knowledgeable people can extract the password.
Organizational measures will face, first and foremost, the conservatism of most players who reject any innovations. In that case, instead of making changes to existing rules, one could, for example, create a Fair Play League in which all games would be conducted under new rules.
What new rules do I mean? First of all, the League should be led by players known in the heroes' world as honest and incorruptible.
We have an Appeals Commission (AC) on our forum. Read the history of what happened to it. Even though no one officially abolished it and it still exists, it only handles situations with blatant cheating (simply resources or troops appearing out of thin air), but proving that a player cheated while broadcasting through Migo turned out to be impossible :smile32: And what an armageddon followed after that :D or simply a flame war.
Initially, every new player joining the League must complete 2-3 random maps in single-player mode based on the same templates used for online games and provide saves and a walkthrough description for the judging commission's review. Why? First of all, as someone correctly said, every player has something called a playstyle. It is quite individual, like handwriting. Once the style is generally known, it is easy to see whether a player is following a practiced scheme or if certain actions "deviate" from that scheme. These actions raise questions and suspicions and must be closely studied. Thus, after every game, saves must be provided to the judging commission or posted for public view, and players are required to write reports about the game as soon as possible, which should make their thought process clear: why they went there instead of here, why they took or didn't take a certain object, fought a certain monster, etc. The judging commission must (and others may) study the saves and reports, ask questions about unclear points, and deliver their verdict: whether the game was "clean" or not.
And players are required to answer all questions without delay!
This won't achieve anything at all
Next is the most important part: a trust rating of players is necessary, built specifically on the basis of past games and their analysis.
I have an immediate counter-question. Who is going to analyze all these games? Because that takes time. I've stopped reviewing my own games. Too much hassle! Although analyzing your own matches is a direct path to increasing skill. But often it's simply too much of a chore—you just want to play for pleasure and that's it. Not geek out over every move, who went where and why.
The main problem is: proving that cheating took place is practically impossible (except for the most blatant methods)! Therefore, relationships here must be built on the principle of trust: whether the judges trust this result or not. If time and again a player's actions find no clear, convincing explanation, it can be assumed that something is fishy. I think players, for the most part, still value their reputation.
The following consideration is also linked to playstyle: it is necessary to play so that your actions are sufficiently "transparent" and do not raise suspicions of "dirty" play. The player themselves must understand what will look suspicious and must avoid such actions. It's not that difficult: if, for example, the main hero walked straight north for 10 days and then suddenly turned sharply west, this must be explained by what happened on that day or what he saw in front of him.
Explanations like "I decided to take a risk, and I got lucky" should not be taken seriously. How many times must a player get "fairytale luck" before everyone realizes they are simply "leading them by the nose"?! The reason for every action must be visible! If this consideration is not adopted as a rule—it's better not to play online at all!
You see, online is much more dynamic than completing some author-made map where the bot is an idiot. Here, it's a struggle against an opponent.
And for that, you need: scouting (maps), development (both towns and hero(es)), resource gathering, game tempo. You have to try to outperform your opponent in this. And with a standard of 8 heroes, where the army is passed back and forth along a chain, picking up all sorts of necessary things from chests to artifacts, cons, hives—the army can be split into several parts and scatter in different directions, primarily to scout for something even more useful. Usually, these are Dragon Utopia or powerful relics. The style also depends on the template, of course. Since people aren't bots, they understand the template; they imagine how to enter a treasury (where lots of tasty things lie behind strong guards), know roughly how to get to the opponent, and each tries to gain an advantage sufficient for victory in their search. There are examples of great chains where players pass the army from one treasury to another in 1 turn, working on two flanks simultaneously. But when new data appears, plans can change radically.
Also, it never happens that a hero walked in one direction for 10 days :D and then suddenly turned somewhere. They turn sharply, but not after 10 days :D You don't walk in one direction for 10 days here :D The whole game can end in 10 days. That's why it's very difficult to determine where a guy cheated and where his intuition worked.
A way also needs to be devised to make it difficult for exposed cheaters to re-register under a new nickname. A combination of personal data should allow the person to be identified: e-mail + ICQ + Skype + IP address (or range of addresses if it's dynamic) + mobile phone number + ... Creating a new mailbox is easy and fast, but changing all of the above together, if you aren't James Bond, isn't that simple!
Again, it's easy to create an email, ICQ, Skype. Change IP via proxy and give a fake phone—who is going to check this phone? Or do you mean the forum might require a passport scan upon registration? :D
Or no one will set up flash cookies either; we've been unable to get an automatic rating for a year now—a year since all requirements for how it should be were formulated, and they asked to make it automatic god knows when, nobody is interested. Let alone identifying cheaters.
Actually, a suggestion just occurred to me that could eliminate 99% of cheating cases online! I understand that this will cause a storm of indignation and many will demand I be burned at the stake for blasphemy, but for the sake of victory over cheating, I dare suggest it. The method of generating random objects must be redesigned so that the contents of all of them—from chests to Dragon Utopia—are formed not at the start of the game, but directly at the moment they are taken, and the random number for this would be set by a system timer so that the randomness is completely unpredictable. Then maphack will become almost pointless, because no one can predict in advance what will drop in the Utopia: Angel Wings or Legion Boots. Of course, such a generation method is not suitable for offline play, as it would instead increase the inequality of tournament participants and lead to players restarting the taking of every chest 20 times...
Yeah, spotted a console Trongo—a two. Then went in with an army and there were 4. Got wiped. Great :D
Сейчас балуюсь этим https://vcmi.eu/download/
За то что нейтралы не бегают за единичкой, для меня это уже стоит того
За то что нейтралы не бегают за единичкой, для меня это уже стоит того