On 11/3/2018 at 5:46 AM, Andylicious said:

People do have incentive to cheat in a war game like Armada, simply because winning feels nice.

Everything you brought up are good points, but I want to especially highlight this. A lot of people say things like "no one would cheat at a meaningless boardgame, it's only when you get the big cash prizes that the sleazeballs come out," but that is just unfortunately not true. Even moreso than winning feeling nice, it's also the case that for some people their egos are so frail and so tied up in their performance at Armada (or whatever other game) that they need to win. For these types, they need to be good at it (or, perhaps more accurately, need others to perceive them as good at it), especially if it's compensating for them not feeling like a winner at home or at work.

I've been playing in and helping run local game nights and leagues and tournaments for a two different game stores over the past decade, and it's both surprising and depressing how many cheaters the communities at these stores have had to address over the years across a variety of games (40k, AoS, Blood Bowl, Magic, X-Wing, 7 Wonders, etc), even in gaming events with literally nothing at stake whatsoever beyond pride. The majority of players are indeed pretty honorable, but I think the number of folks who take unfair advantages in games is higher than most people would expect. Armada is no different.

I really like the snobbish quality of Armada, we are too good to cheat, we are portraying Admirals rather than these measly pilots, we are an elite club, almost Star Trek level,

yet we are all human, and as the stakes go higher so does the temptation and I think it is one of the indirect benefits of the game, it mimicks real life characteristics of people. If this was a computer game, cheating would not be an option, however the fact that you have to watch out the board and every movement of your opponent, just in case an intentional or nonintentional mishap that can change the fate of the game can happen. always keeps you alert and in a way it makes the game much more realistic.

Well for tournaments, if they place cameras that can be reviewed on the spot by the judges should be enough deterrence.

I don't want to bump this thread (what am I doing? Ugh, don't feed it and it will go away) because I really don't see a reason why it needs to be bumped purely on hypotheticals. Every community has bad apples. Bad apples are not indicative of the player base as a whole, which is generally chill, friendly, and competitive without needing to cheat.

TL:DR

Of course you can cheat.

Most don't.

If you cheat you shouldn't.

If you think your opponent is cheating, address it to them in the moment, to their face and involve a TO if necessary.

/thread

2 hours ago, BrobaFett said:

I don't want to bump this thread (what am I doing? Ugh, don't feed it and it will go away) because I really don't see a reason why it needs to be bumped purely on hypotheticals. Every community has bad apples. Bad apples are not indicative of the player base as a whole, which is generally chill, friendly, and competitive without needing to cheat.

TL:DR

Of course you can cheat.

Most don't.

If you cheat you shouldn't.

If you think your opponent is cheating, address it to them in the moment, to their face and involve a TO if necessary.

/thread

To add one more thing: be very communicative before anything happens. It's a good idea anyway because it prevents errors. "Looks like I have medium range, don't you think?" "It seems like you're going to bump Jan and Mauler, do you agree?" "Okay, so let's mark that MC30 next round before you move it. That move's gonna be key." Otherwise, you're left with a varying degree of certainty after the damage is done.

16 hours ago, LostFleet said:

If this was a computer game, cheating would not be an option,

Well for tournaments, if they place cameras that can be reviewed on the spot by the judges should be enough deterrence.

Tell that the King of Kong or the dozens who are caught cheating on video/computer games. Cheating is always an option.

Cameras and having players report potential cheating situations would become a new tactic for slow rollers to abuse. Who is setting up all these cameras and equipment to record. Are we going to be like baseball and some poor guy in Roseville gets to make the call or like the nfl where the judge goes under the cloth and comes out with a verdict. That’s not really practical either.

There are dozens of ways to cheat in the game and yes it does happen but if you go into every game expecting the player is going to cheat then your missing the point of enjoyment of a game. Best of luck, I’m more inclined to give my opponents the benefit of doubt in armada.

17 hours ago, LostFleet said:

Well  for to  urnaments, if they place cameras that can be reviewed on the spot by the judges should be enough  deterrence. 

Research how “well” that worked in XWing.

”dial-gate” should get you there...

8 minutes ago, Palanthas said:

Cameras and having players report potential cheating situations would become a new tactic for slow rollers to abuse. Who is setting up all these cameras and equipment to record. Are we going to be like baseball and some poor guy in Roseville gets to make the call or like the nfl where the judge goes under the cloth and comes out with a verdict. That’s not really practical either.

I love videos from Armada games. But as battle reports!

I totally agree to what Palanthas wrote. It took over 100 years before they tried video-referee for soccer and only at worlds. And even there it's boring to wait for the referee to watch the video before he decides. A good game should be fast and smooth, like ... Armada?

It's a game, pals. We play for fun. And it's no fun anymore, if you need a camera to proof that your opponent is cheating (or to proof you didn't). If there is someone you don't want to play with, don't. And if there is someone at a tournament behaving in a strange way, ask a TO to watch. But don't loose your temper. Don't let grow negativity. Try to laugh about it, because it's ridiculous.

If someone needs to cheat to have fun, that's a person you should feel pitty for. Don't blame him. You don't know how bad his life has been. Be glad yours was better.

7 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Research how “well” that worked in XWing.

”dial-gate” should get you there...

They did stop the cheater from progressing further in the tournament. They did nothing for the poor guy who lost the game in question as far as seeding went, but he did get all the top swag from the tournament.

14 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Research how “well” that worked in XWing.

”dial-gate” should get you there... 

5 minutes ago, Cusm said:

They did stop the cheater from progressing further in the tournament.  They did nothing for the poor guy who lost the game in question as far as seeding went, but he did get all the top swag from the tournament.

Unfortunately I do not follow X-Wing, can you tell me what happened ?

6 minutes ago, LostFleet said:

Unfortunately I do not follow X-Wing, can you tell me what happened ?

“Someone cheated on camera. What follows does not in any way form a basis for how things should be done...”

Really, It’s worth it Academically to research it, as it was quite a big deal made, with very lasting consequences.

Guy changed his dial on camera. Twitch user saw and texted a friend at the event. They told the TO. EVENTUALLY they looked at footage after the game and did not let the person continue. His opponent that lost still had the loss for the day but the eventually gave him, IIRC, all the prize support for the event. This was the second time someone at a major X-Wing event cheated and unfortunately FFG has not handled it the best in many people's opinion. They have banned people for life in other games, the Warhammer card game had 2 guys banned after being caught on video drawing more cards than they should have.

ok so can we let this thread which is now about cheating IN A DIFFERENT GAME please fall off the front page of the forum?

I always set my shield dials to 4 on each side. Easy games.

On 11/5/2018 at 4:04 PM, LostFleet said:

Well for tournaments, if they place cameras that can be reviewed on the spot by the judges should be enough deterrence.

You would think so, but this has simply not been the case. In X-Wing over the past couple of years there have been multiple people caught cheating on streamed (video-recorded) games. Often, this has involved them sneakily altering their set dial to respond to something the opponent does earlier in the round. One year, the winner of US Nationals of the FFG Conquest card game was caught cheating when folks, watching the video from the game after the event had finished, realized he was drawing extra cards into his hand. All of these cases are despite being explicitly on film, but have spurred FFG to create and maintain their banned players list. Because these cases were caught on film, and provided undeniable evidence that players were cheating (and even winning) at events, it prompted FFG to create and maintain their 'suspended player' list: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/op/spolicy/ There are currently still three players on the list serving suspensions until 2020 and one player with a lifetime ban form FFG events. However, it seems FFG may have stopped maintaining this, since the suspension list and policy has not been updated for almost a year and a half, and I can think of at least two confirmed X-Wing cheaters caught on film who do not appear on that current list.

Magic the Gathering has a had a long, long history of sordid tales of cheaters. When you search it, you can even find blogs that teach you 'how to cheat' in Magic. Most of them are "here's how to cheat so that you can protect yourself against it," but some of them are just "here's how to successfully cheat in Magic." You can find countless threads about cheating on forums at sites like MtGSalvation, and you can find confessionals of "I cheat at Magic, because so many other people do" and polls trying to assess just how many folks do cheat, and under what circumstances.

As to video games, there been cases of players cheating at Vassal X-Wing Tournaments, such that now for instance you can't save your dials when you save a squad and have to pull one fresh when you set-up for a game (because players were copying and deleting dials so that they always had the 'right move' when it was time to reveal). Players were cheating in BloodBowl computer game leagues once the RNG code had been hacked, such that they knew what die rolls were waiting in the pipe and could adjust their game decisions based on upcoming good or bad rolls. Hacks have always been a perpetual problem in First-Person-Shooters (TF, CS, CoD, Halo, etc.) with 'aimbots' or 'clipping' or 'hit box manipulation' or 'double shot' or any of the many other types of cheats that have been used in such games. League of Legends has had its own struggles with scripters/cheaters as well.



Cheaters suck. There seem to be some bad apples in every gaming community, even ones that are small and friendly and chill and casual with nothing on the line. I myself was cheated out of an Armada game at Nationals 2017 (see up-thread), and it is incredibly frustrating.

What's the moral of the story? Well, you certainly don't want to assume everyone is a cheater, because most people aren't. But you also don't want to assume that no one is a cheater, because sadly every gaming community has folks that are, and, as Tolkien says, "forewarned is forearmed."

To use the force is cheating.