Players ARE CHEATING!

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IceHot

1 player with 3 cards in hand in last game purchased the last Province after only playing a silver and copper with the other card still in hand.


jsh

http://dominion.lauxnet.com/scavenger/?user=IceHot&num_results=10

Please go here and tell us which game the 'cheating' happened in so we can figure out what happened. Odds are, the player had duration coin from the previous turn or coin tokens.

Edit: Found it. Game 5299852

Your opponent had 5 coin tokens saved from Candlestick Maker. No cheating there!

AdamH

The real bug here is that this information isn't displayed in the game log, so the only indication that this is happening is the short time that the actions/buys/coins box values change.

The game log really needs to display all information relevant to the game -- the problem here goes beyond getting bug reports that aren't actually bugs: people who aren't familiar with the quirks of the software are going to think the software doesn't work because they aren't being given all of the information they need to properly play the game. This is a huge deal.

This same thing happened from Qvist's perspective in this game #5297643 on the last turn, no coin tokens were involved. I was told this is a known bug but I don't recall reading about it here, so here it is again.

Ingix

I'm all for having better interfaces and maybe a little more information in the log wouldn't hurt. But let's not confuse the issue: This game is AFAIK completely simulated server-side. Nobody can cheat in the sense that they play only 7 coin, shout "Watch out, a 3-headed monkey behind you!" and, while their opponent looks away, take a Province.

As jsh demonstrated, it is possible with the current tools to find out exactly what happened. There were coin tokens in the game. From the description, it looks like IceHot was not absent and AFK, otherwise how would he know that opponent still had a card in hand? He simply did not notice that opponent had accumulated coin tokens, it seems.

Again, of course it would be nice if the game log said something like "Player X converts 5 coin tokens into coins" in such a situation. But I take issue with your statement (which you voiced before) that this is a mayor bug.

If you are absent for opponent's turn and want to catch up, you have to look in two places: The log (so you see what he trashed, gained, a.s.o) and the information area for each player where you can clearly see how many coin tokens he has, how much debt, etc.

AdamH

Quote from: Ingix on 20 July 2017, 02:05:31 PM
Again, of course it would be nice if the game log said something like "Player X converts 5 coin tokens into coins" in such a situation. But I take issue with your statement (which you voiced before) that this is a mayor bug.

I'm just going to straight-up disagree here. It's a huge pain to inspect the log and try to figure out what's happening, and it would be pretty much impossible to do if you aren't familiar with the game and you don't know the kinds of things you're looking for.

Sure, the game is being played out correctly, but I thought the whole point of this software was to make playing the game pleasant. If users can't tell what's happening, what's the point of having this software at all?

There seems to be a disconnect here between whoever is in charge of prioritizing tasks and the people who are actually using the software, and it's going to be difficult for Shuffleit to succeed while that disconnect is there. It's the user who decides what's important, not you or me.

Ingix

The log is pretty clear on what happened: Opponent bought a Province (the last one) and ended the game. I'm not even sure if IceHot looked at the log (as I previously wrote, it seems to me that he looked at the 'live action' and was baffled on how 3 coin could buy a Province).  So it is not even clear if your proposal would have helped in this case.

It's another issue of how to treat game mechanics that a player may not be familiar with (like coin tokens). How would you make it clear to a player that has never seen cards using coin tokens what happened here? Maybe tooltips when hovering the mouse over the coin token display? But of course this would annoy player who already know what this is.

I'm not sure what to do, but to be also frank: I don't think an entry in the log would have helped in this case.

Cave-O-Sapien

#6
Quote from: AdamH on 21 July 2017, 01:29:01 AM
Quote from: Ingix on 20 July 2017, 02:05:31 PM
Again, of course it would be nice if the game log said something like "Player X converts 5 coin tokens into coins" in such a situation. But I take issue with your statement (which you voiced before) that this is a mayor bug.

I'm just going to straight-up disagree here. It's a huge pain to inspect the log and try to figure out what's happening, and it would be pretty much impossible to do if you aren't familiar with the game and you don't know the kinds of things you're looking for.

Sure, the game is being played out correctly, but I thought the whole point of this software was to make playing the game pleasant. If users can't tell what's happening, what's the point of having this software at all?

There seems to be a disconnect here between whoever is in charge of prioritizing tasks and the people who are actually using the software, and it's going to be difficult for Shuffleit to succeed while that disconnect is there. It's the user who decides what's important, not you or me.

(nods in agreement)

We can imagine a ridiculous scenario in which neither player sees anything his/her opponent does on his/her turn, and is left to infer what has happened based on minimal game state information.

"Oh, I have to discard two cards. I see from the supply that Militia is available, and there are 9 of them; I suppose my opponent played a Militia."

"There are two fewer provinces than there were just a second ago, I guess my opponent bought two of them."

I think we can all agree this would be a terrible way to play the game. But, in a few circumstances, this is essentially what is happening. Off the top of my head:

1) Bane reveals to Young Witch
2) Coin usage
3) Enchantress

AdamH

Quote from: Ingix on 21 July 2017, 09:40:48 AM
I'm not even sure if IceHot looked at the log (as I previously wrote, it seems to me that he looked at the 'live action' and was baffled on how 3 coin could buy a Province).

The log serves multiple purposes. It's an aid in-game and it's a way to look at games after-the-fact for reference. The log should be clear and useful in both of these cases -- saying that it's OK for one of them does not make the log good enough; it needs to be OK for both of them.

Quote from: Ingix on 21 July 2017, 09:40:48 AM
I'm not sure what to do, but to be also frank: I don't think an entry in the log would have helped in this case.

An entry in the log would have helped me, and I struggle to see how putting a line in whenever someone spends coin tokens doesn't help someone. If it really doesn't help you at all, OK let's say I believe you. Ask ten people who use this software if they would rather have that line appear in the log than not and if two or more of them say the log would be better off without it, I will eat my hat.

I really really really think you have this one wrong. The game log needs to display all information. What mode did they pick for Squire? How many actions/buys/coins do they have at the start of when they buy cards? Even if the game log wasn't vital for actually playing the game and knowing what is going on (which it currently is, and shouldn't be), the game log should still have all of this information in it.

dane

Quote from: AdamH on 21 July 2017, 09:07:27 PM
Quote from: Ingix on 21 July 2017, 09:40:48 AM
I'm not sure what to do, but to be also frank: I don't think an entry in the log would have helped in this case.

An entry in the log would have helped me, and I struggle to see how putting a line in whenever someone spends coin tokens doesn't help someone. If it really doesn't help you at all, OK let's say I believe you. Ask ten people who use this software if they would rather have that line appear in the log than not and if two or more of them say the log would be better off without it, I will eat my hat.

I think you have misunderstood the point that Ingix was making.  If you look back earlier in the thread, you'll see that he is of the opinion that the log should contain a line stating that X coins have been converted, so his comment "I don't think an entry in the log would have helped in this case" is certainly not suggesting that he thinks that such a line in the log is unnecessary.  Rather I believe he is of the opinion that in this case the player in question wouldn't have noticed the entry in the log and hence would still have been confused.

Ingix

@Adam: Our fundamental differences seem to be what the log should be good/useful for. To me it should be useful while playing, both when recalling things that are public information and that I should remember, and when I was away and actually didn't see (say: What opponent gained last turn because I have a Smuggler in hand).

I think that the log is not (and should not be) the way to analyze a turn. It would be much better if the ability to load the game could be expanded to allow a game to be seamlessly replayed, with the board state and both player's hands visible at all times, as well as the current actions/buys/coins, etc.

Of course, this ability does not exist (and may never be) and the log is all you have now to do that analysis. Would it be better if it gave choices like Actions/Buys/Silver for Squire? Yes, it would be. Is it necessary when the actual game is in progress? I do not think so.

Again, I do not think that a log line saying "5 coin tokens are converted to coins" would have helped in this case, but you are right it wouldn't have hurt.

AdamH

Quote from: Ingix on 24 July 2017, 01:27:46 PM
@Adam: Our fundamental differences seem to be what the log should be good/useful for. To me it should be useful while playing

[...]

I think that the log is not (and should not be) the way to analyze a turn.

Do you not analyze turns while playing? If not, I'd recommend it, you will play much better. I'm being a little bit sarcastic, because I think you mean something else by "analyze a turn" and I don't quite know what you're getting at.

All of the information about what my opponent did during their turn (that I'm legally allowed to know) should be available to me in a manner that's easy for me to parse. I should be able to blink during my opponent's turn and not have to spend five minutes and figure out a puzzle about the kingdom in order to know what happened. If what you mean by "analyze a turn" is making the game take really long by studying the game log and doing precise calculations, then having extra information in the game log would actually help with this instead of hurt it; I spend less time wondering about what my opponent did, and I just get to think about the things related to Dominion gameplay.

Needless to say, this goes for my turns as well. If I click somewhere and it does something that I wasn't expecting, or if I'm confused about what is happening in the game, it should be clear to me what's going on. The client is pretty good about this except for the game log IMO.

Ingix

Quote from: AdamH on 24 July 2017, 03:41:27 PM
Do you not analyze turns while playing? If not, I'd recommend it, you will play much better. I'm being a little bit sarcastic, because I think you mean something else by "analyze a turn" and I don't quite know what you're getting at.

Here I meant with "analyze a turn" a post-game analysis of what happened. For a player that has never seen this, understanding how playing lot's of Worker's Village and Goons, and having a single Watchtower, can create big amount of vp tokens in a single turn, is probably illuminating about the power of Goons.

Quote
All of the information about what my opponent did during their turn (that I'm legally allowed to know) should be available to me in a manner that's easy for me to parse. I should be able to blink during my opponent's turn and not have to spend five minutes and figure out a puzzle about the kingdom in order to know what happened.

And I don't think you need to do that (the puzzling part), if you trust the game to be bug free (which of course it isn't).

Your opponent bought a Province, let's just assume that he had the coins to do so, and not focus on counting his Militia plays and Peddler plays to figure out why playing just a Silver was enough. Neither card mentioned anything about creating coins, for example.

Similarly, trust that the game takes correctly care of counting the available actions/buys, so when your blink is over and he has 3 coins, 2 actions and 3 buys, focus on that information instead of figuring out how he had to play his 3 Squires to get that. If you want to do that later, then that falls into the post-game analysis category.


AdamH

Quote from: Ingix on 25 July 2017, 03:15:53 PM
Here I meant with "analyze a turn" a post-game analysis of what happened. For a player that has never seen this, understanding how playing lot's of Worker's Village and Goons, and having a single Watchtower, can create big amount of vp tokens in a single turn, is probably illuminating about the power of Goons.

OK I understand what you mean now, it's very clear. So then you said this before:

Quote from: Ingix on 24 July 2017, 01:27:46 PM
I think that the log is not (and should not be) the way to analyze a turn. It would be much better if the ability to load the game could be expanded to allow a game to be seamlessly replayed, with the board state and both player's hands visible at all times, as well as the current actions/buys/coins, etc.

and well I just straight-up disagree with the bolded part. What you suggest is a cool feature and would be great, but it's not a reason that the game logs shouldn't also be able to stand on their own as a text-only way to analyze games after they are done. That would also be a really useful feature and I think both should exist.


Quote from: Ingix on 25 July 2017, 03:15:53 PM
Similarly, trust that the game takes correctly care of counting the available actions/buys, so when your blink is over and he has 3 coins, 2 actions and 3 buys, focus on that information instead of figuring out how he had to play his 3 Squires to get that. If you want to do that later, then that falls into the post-game analysis category.

So even if I trust the game and it's actually bug-free, focusing on just this information isn't enough, even during the game. With this example, it can be very helpful to know how many Squires my opponent is playing for Actions or for Buys because then I can accurately judge the terminal space of their deck or know how many gains they can threaten on their turns; this requires more knowledge than just the Actions/Buys/Coins counter, so I actually have to do that puzzling.

In a perfect world, every time anything happens at all in the game, it would appear in the game log. Actions, Buys, Coins, and cards drawn all have lines in the log when they are given out by cards (yes it's redundant for some cards like Woodcutter but it's extremely important for cards like Minion or Squire or actually almost all Dominion cards that don't give you exactly the same thing every time you play them) and it's all color-coded and indented as well to improve readability. And I still maintain that a line in the game log at the beginning of every Buy phase that displays remaining actions, buys, and coins would be really helpful both during and after games.

I feel like all of the information should be available to people, and if individuals decide that there's too much information, then there can be configurable options to automatically collapse certain types of information in the game log.

Ingix

I reordered some statements, because I think they belong together:
Quote from: AdamH on 25 July 2017, 05:00:04 PM
In a perfect world, every time anything happens at all in the game, it would appear in the game log. Actions, Buys, Coins, and cards drawn all have lines in the log when they are given out by cards (yes it's redundant for some cards like Woodcutter but it's extremely important for cards like Minion or Squire or actually almost all Dominion cards that don't give you exactly the same thing every time you play them) and it's all color-coded and indented as well to improve readability.

<rerordered>

I feel like all of the information should be available to people, and if individuals decide that there's too much information, then there can be configurable options to automatically collapse certain types of information in the game log.

And now we are again in the distinction between "nice to have" (which the above certainly is) and "The real bug here is that this information isn't displayed in the game log" and the reality of such an (IMO) massive change being implemented.

I also have to say that I didn't understand your "accurately judge the terminal space of their deck" example, because I'm just not a good enough player to see the relevance.

Quote
And I still maintain that a line in the game log at the beginning of every Buy phase that displays remaining actions, buys, and coins would be really helpful both during and after games.

Besides Villa and that one Tournament prize, what is the action count at that moment good for? If they played their whole hand, it may give you information, but if they kept a few cards in hand...?

AdamH

Quote from: Ingix on 26 July 2017, 04:28:03 PM
I also have to say that I didn't understand your "accurately judge the terminal space of their deck" example, because I'm just not a good enough player to see the relevance.

Quote
And I still maintain that a line in the game log at the beginning of every Buy phase that displays remaining actions, buys, and coins would be really helpful both during and after games.

Besides Villa and that one Tournament prize, what is the action count at that moment good for?

Both of these things are answered by the same concept. "Terminal space" is one of many things I just made up, but then I saw a bunch of other people using the term and assumed it was clear exactly what it meant.

I defined "terminal space" as the number of terminal actions you can expect to play on your turn. If you're drawing your deck, you can usually calculate this pretty easily. It's useful because it's one of many metrics you can use to gauge the capabilitity of your opponent's deck.

Why is it a useful thing to know? The trivial example is that I play a Swindler and now I have the opportunity to give my opponent a village, a non-terminal, a terminal, a treasure, etc. and I want to know which one is least useful to them. If they are "over-terminaled" or "don't have enough terminal space" or "have too many terminals" then I want to give them a terminal. If they're being the "village idiot" then I'll just give them another village.

But knowing the exact capabilities of your opponent's deck is crucial to being able to properly play an endgame. If they have extra terminal space then I know they can add terminal payload to their deck and have higher capabilities that I now have to play around. If they don't have extra terminal space and villages are out, I know their deck is limited in its potential. It can even have insights into how well their deck is running, since some cards can be played for other benefits besides actions. It's hard for me to tell how many of their Squires are being played for Actions when that information could be very relevant (they played a Squire for buys they didn't use, but they could have played it for actions instead, so they have more terminal space than is showing -- this is why having lines in the game log when these types of choices are made is very important).

All of this is strategically useful, but probably the most common use case is that I just want a concise summary of my opponent's turn, and right now all of the information I need to get that summary isn't there if I didn't catch it on my opponent's turn.

Quote from: Ingix on 26 July 2017, 04:28:03 PM
If they played their whole hand, it may give you information, but if they kept a few cards in hand...?

You make a good point. Number of cards left in hand would be great to know as well.