About once a day I go play hearts at MSN Zone Games and it’s getting harder and harder to get a game going without running into a cheater.
They have various ways of cheating…some are shoppers(they pop in and if they don’t get a good hand they bail before the game begins). Some are stallers…if the don’t win they leave the game open but go to another room and start up another game there waiting for someone else to leave the table. They used to have a patch to allow them to play any card regardless of suit to avoid ever taking any points(MSN fiiinaaally fixed that). They will use TWO computers to play at the same time against themselves to boost their ratings.
Many more ways too.
So I go to a message board(I’m not linking to it…don’t want to encourage anyone) that is 90% about how to cheat at the Zone and how to generally make an ass of yourself there.
It is like a bizarro world over there…up is down and black is white. They discuss how to best cheat and which sysops are to be avoided because they’ll ban you fast and if there’s any way to get sysops powers for themselves. They complain about getting banned and make fake messages from plus members to send to the MSN authorities to get sysops banned if they can.
I’ve gotten so pissed about these pinheads I hunt cheaters from room to room warning others about them. My “job” lends itself to being at the games at any time of the day or night if I like so I can take the time to really annoy the hell out of them.
I do understand it’s probably the same type of person who “trolls” either message boards or newsgroups. And most are kids bored thinking this makes them cool or something but I wish MSN would do something about them.
Not only does MSN not do enough in my opinion but recently they took some of the banning powers away from the Plus members because of the campaign by those pissants at the board I mentioned…they were crowing about how they were successful.
I don’t understand the mindset of these people. What possible benefit can they gain by having a high rating if it’s apparent to anyone who checks they cheated to get it?(You see someone with a 2100 rating and 50 incs you KNOW they cheated)
I was tempted to litter my post with swear words but at last second decided not to…sorry guys maybe next time.
A whole new pit thread could be made about how AOE2 (microsoft game) running on Microsoft windows on the Microsoft Game Zone website STILL CRASHES. It’s got several well-known bugs… this is not just my machine!
So you sign on, hoping to play a quick game. Finally find a group to play with, claiming to be rookies. Good, you say, I’m not very skilled. I want people at my skill level, these guys say they’re rookies, I’m a rookie…
…and get your ass kicked. They’re ‘experts’, which term apparently means they go fully offensive ASAP. No defense… if you could be offensive faster, you could kill them. But they don’t use any strategy at all. Send 200 knights into your city, when you’re still building farms.
Next time someone cheats, hit enter, type black death, and then hit enter again. That fixes them, especially if you’re the first to report the cheating.
This is an activity that I despise almost as much as the cheating itself. Your heart may be in the right place, but it not really accomplishing much, and you may be unjustly slandering some people. How am I supposed to know that your broadcasted complaints (flooding, by the way) are justified? Maybe you’re just a pissed-off sore looser.
I’ve partnered with more than a few people who were being maligned in the lobby as cheaters or disconnects, only to have the game proceed without incident.
Don’t play with people who have too may incompletes or people with enormous ratings but very few games played.
By the way, I am in need of a decent non-cheating spades partner
There are plenty of places to play games online, especially simple ones like hearts.
Statements like Amp’s make me cringe because they’re so obviously based on incomplete information. One or two bad experiences turned you off forever? You’re obviously not playing the right games, in the right places, with the right people. I’ve gotten countless hours of enjoyment out of online games, and you could too if you cared to.
Oh, Attrayant where do you play spades? I’ve played several hundred games on Yahoo over the last few years but lately I’ve fallen out of the habit. Want to play a game or two sometime?
First I am as aware as anyone that people can get disconnected anytime without attributing nefarious motives to all players who get disconnected.
I only do this when they stop playing and when I check other rooms they are now playing at another table while waiting for someone at the previous table to ff or to take the inc. Plus I will tell others in the lobby to check the other room themselves to see I am being truthful. After that I begin to warn(IM them) those at the new table to check other room too so they KNOW I am not just a sore loser.
Personally I have gotten those warnings too and I appreciate it.
Few things are worse than playing all the way through a reg game and have the loser just bail rather than take the loss. You cannot always tell just by checking the rating…especially if they have the anti-stalling patch so they never time out.
If however you are referring to the practice of flooding the lobby with the warnings I agree I don’t like that and do not do it either.
I focus mainly on the potential new victims of the cheater…those they are attempting to play while waiting for the first table to ff. I Zone each one so they can make an informed decision. Some will ignore you and then later after THEY get cheated too they are the ones most likely to flood the lobby afterwards.
I don’t expect anyone to simply take my word for it but many peple don’t check the ratings themselves unless they are warned about someone.
My feeling about this is unless the honest players stick together and warn other honest players about the cheaters it will only get worse and worse.
Besides there is something satisfying about the thought that perhaps in the future the cheaters will be forced to only play against other cheaters…something to hope for at least.
I’ve been playing hearts on the MSN Zone for longer than I care to admit. I play several nicknames, each with a different strategy (but never two seats at a time like so many of the cheaters). I’ve been high in the ratings and low in the ratings. I’ve seen all the reprehensible behavior that you’ve all seen, and I agree with many of you on most subjects.
What I totally don’t get is the utter lack of sportsmanship. Hardly ever any more do I see so much as a gg or gga at the end of a hard fought game. Gone is the friendly chat in the window. Now, it’s all about ratings. It’s sad, very, very sad. I may be an old fart by some standards, but, when it comes to this issue, I’m glad to be an old fart. 'nuff said
Way to welcome new members, DrFidelus. Yaknow, you could’ve pointed out the zombie thread without being an asshole.
Welcome to the SDMB Peteski. Generally speaking, we do not bump 9 year old threads just to say ‘me too’. But stay around, get a feel for the place. You may want to check out our forum, The Game Room, which covers all manner of games and sports.
What I hated most about Yahoo! games was the stratification between Medium and Expert players, because once you got to 2000 ratings, you only stood to gain a few points by playing most other mediums, and most experts wouldn’t play you because they were all in 2300 rankings. The few times the experts deigned to play with me, my partner (the random “Expert”) lost the game for me because they expected me to play badly and didn’t trust me, then blamed me for being too crafty.
Not in the Pit. If he had resurrected a zombie in General Questions I would be the very soul of civility. But one must be willing to change presentation in recognition of venue and context.
You know what? You can take that piss-poor attitude and shove it where the sun don’t shine. You probably think you’re entitled to be an asshole because this is the Pit, but just because you can do something obviously doesn’t mean you should.
Not only was your post unkind and a dreadful failure of a way to welcome a new poster, it also has an appalling absence of substance. For you see, Peteski did not do the thing you claimed. If he had simply typed “me too,” I could see grounds for snark. And I’d probably laugh.
But he didn’t. The heart of the matter is that it was not simply a me-too post. In his post, Peteski first laments the fact this issue is still on-going today. Second, he commiserates with the OP. What you may basely decry as a me-too post can easily be seen as a validation of the issues the OP presents. Thirdly, the OP actually adds new meat to the discussion table when he bemoans the lack of civility in games now-a-days.
That’s what really blows my mind about your rude post, DrFidelius. How can you claim it was just a ‘pathetic’ me-too zombie bump when he actually freakin’ talks about other things? This claim is substantiated by the fact that Ludovic began sharing his own experiences about the trials and tribulations of online hearts.
Look, I’m not a large letter of the alphabet; it’s fine to be rude. But being rude, wrong on top of that, and unnecessarily snarky to a new member? That’s just not cricket.
I’m beginning to think you’re not actually a doctor.
