I would like to formally request...

[Ghost]

It's short and to the point, although all the points it hits on are things that you apparently missed. The second sentence is a sarcastic quip, but a well deserved one--you weren't even careful enough to actually request what you wanted in your request for it. If pointing out your inability to actually request what you thought you were requesting makes me an asshole, then so be it.

Is English your second language by any chance?

You should probably ask yourself that question. I didn't have any trouble understanding his statement.

[P-51]

It's short and to the point, although all the points it hits on are things that you apparently missed. The second sentence is a sarcastic quip, but a well deserved one--you weren't even careful enough to actually request what you wanted in your request for it. If pointing out your inability to actually request what you thought you were requesting makes me an asshole, then so be it.

Is English your second language by any chance?

You should probably ask yourself that question. I didn't have any trouble understanding his statement.

Its not he's writing I'm concerned about, I understand him fine, its his reading that worries me a bit.

[ben55]

There were three votes each having about 200 votes per. I would say 200 users is pretty close to everyone considering the population of this lobby. Because you and three of your friends didn't get to vote shouldn't trump the 200 or so that did vote, and even if they added in your three votes nothing would of changed.

[HK47]

Who said we didn't vote?
I voted

[Ghost]

438 people participated in the final poll. There's about 4 of you bitching here. You might need a bit more support...

[HK47]

Lawl i would tell people from the lobby to come and say stuff if i didn't go and ask for a ban

[Omega]

This does not relate to my quote above which was refering to this thread. viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2555

Anyone who bothers to go back and read the response can plainly see that:
1) The response DOES relate to your quote above
2) The response DOES refer to that thread

Anyone who bothers to go back further in the discussion will clearly see that originally, you had responded to a multi-paragraph response of mine, and cut it up into smaller sections without realizing, forgetting, or ignoring that it was a cohesive whole, and thus thought I didn't say things that I did in what you were responding to, because I stated them later, or earlier. This is why I started the response with going over some previous post history.

Please pay better attention, as I really can't be bothered to go back and quote a long chain of lengthy replies, and I also shouldn't have to. I can probably still be bothered to go back and quote snippets, however, and I'm sure I'll have to before I finish writing this reply.

I think we made ourselves very clear, I have already provided you quotes from this thread viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2555 and there was no reason to mistake what we were asking for.

I don't think you've properly understood this fact yet. I did not misunderstand what you were asking. I understood what you, and everyone else, intended to ask. I also understood that you ineptly communicated to the point where a detailed analysis of what was said will yield a great deal of evidence that suggests you and the others were asking for something other than they intended to ask for, and only a small amount of evidence suggests otherwise. Case in point:

From viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2555
You start with...
"Topic: I would like to formally request
Post: A tribute screen. ..."

Nicoly chimes in with "I too wish for the Tribute screen back", and later in his posts says "...rather than getting rid of the total tribute screen."

Jushe chimes in with "...And a Tribute Screen would be nice again"

HK47 chimes in with "Yeah teh trib screen would be an absolutely astounding deature. To uh, put back into the game."

White Fang weighs in with "yeah getting trib screen back would be nice"

You weigh in again with "I would tend to agree the tribute screen is a most useful feature and wish to have it reinstated."

Every single post on that thread, except your second one where you claim without any evidence to indicate anything one way or the other, that no one cares enough to glitch anymore (assuming that they could still glitch units, I suppose...), and my post, people don't realize that they're not requesting what they think they are. Reading the entire posts looks even less flattering for your case, as there is only one indication that you meant the ability to tribute, from you, in the original post.

Perhaps you're the one who needs to learn to read. What I said in the quote that supposed makes me look silly for not being able to read, was simply that the smartass remark about the ineptitude of everyone in that thread to properly communicate was, in fact, warranted, because that kind of ineptitude does in fact warrant a smart ass remark. The fact that I read the thread, recognized the actual content of every post, and realized the intended content of every post, shows that I certainly CAN read, which means I don't look silly after all. You look moronic for that remark, though.

Hey look! That's part of my reply, where I happen to go through that thread and look at what people actually stated. If you think failing to communicate that massively is "very clear" communication, I really don't know what to say.

Is English your second language by any chance?

Clearly not. Is not using silly, mistaken ad hominiem arguments in regards to me not understanding english or apparently not being able to read, despite the foundations of these 'arguments' being addressed multiple times and shown to be fallacious on your part (as well as extremely unconvincing, as all ad hominiem are) too hard for you? Because I'm seriously getting sick of seeing the same shit over and over when it's already been addressed a few times, and you seem to either not understand that, or are just ignoring it so you can repeat the same shit, which makes me think that you're not paying attention or are being intellectually dishonest, or both.

So are we just going to eliminate the possibility that the community made a wrong decision? There is clearly no reason for doing something this extreme to solve a problem that has little effect on the actual gameplay. Perhaps you answered this later in your essay but I still would like to know what is so hard about the way we reported cheaters at the VUG forums. It would make so much more sense then taking away tributes and custom chat.

What defines a "right" decision, or a "wrong" decision here? You seem to be applying your own underlying value judgments to the rest of the community, when these value judgments for *everyone* are entirely subjective. Due to the subjective nature of everyone's value judgments, they're going to be different for everyone, even if in some cases they're almost identical. I'm not going to apply labels such as right and wrong on the community's decision, because in this case those labels are meaningless and inapplicable. Try to take a step back from your own value judgments, biases, and preconceptions, and you'll realize that the only fair way to make a decision on this was to have a vote on it, and go with what the community wanted. You may object by saying that it would have been better to simply not give the community a choice, but if you take a step back again, you'll see that not giving the community a choice is analogous as one person or a small group of people enforcing that choice on everyone else, and I think you'll agree that virtually everyone the change effects deciding upon the change collectively is a superior option to one or a few people dictating how things will be in this case.

As for what is so hard about reporting cheaters, I did already answer that somewhere, and it's clear a great majority of the community thinks that it is infact very difficult to do so. Personally, I don't think it's all that difficult, however, I understand that the proficiency the average lobby user has with technology, empire earth, and mathematics/logic required to prove someone is cheating is very different from my own. While writing this, for example, I had someone ask me if producing 14 citizens and 8 clubmen in a TL game where the person mined 560 food was possible. I, and a lot of the moderating staff, get questions like this quite frequently, and a lot of the time people don't even believe our answers--in the above case, the person was extremely skeptical that it was indeed possible and they'd have 8 food left, and continued to argue that the person must have cheated somehow. I hope this illustrates how something extremely basic like that is hard for a lot of people.

This is not unreasonable but you still do not know us so you shouldn't dismiss us as idiots for something that happened on one day. I agree with you I did a couple stupid things that day but that doesn't reflect everything I have done on EE.

I'm not. I've dismissed HK, Jushe, and Nicoly as idiots a very long time ago, based off of nearly every encounter I've ever had with them screaming "ABSOLUTE MORON". While that may not accurately reflect reality, based off of everything it's the only reasonable conclusion I can reach. As for you, I didn't dismiss you as an idiot, although I admit I did suspect it as idiots tend to cluster in packs, and your actions that day weren't all that intelligent.

...I think this should be something that is up for debate because it has an impact on our game and after having this feature for the last five years it is ridiculous to take it away especially since cheating is less common then it ever has been in the past five years.

I wouldn't agree that cheating is less common than it has ever been in the past 5 years. I would agree that brazen, retarded cheating is less common than it has ever been in the past 5 years. It's a slight distinction, but I think it's a very important one to make for a variety of reasons.

As for debate, one of the things I've tried to hint at throughout my posts in this thread is that there's already been one. There's actually been two distinct ones, even. The first was around the time the EEChina lobby was discovered. The community debated it, and there was a poll. The overwhelming consensus at that time was that removing the tribute screen was not worth it. Another poll in January of this year asked the same question, and a much higher percentage favored the option of removing the tribute screen, although there wasn't any active debate regarding this, and the amount in favor wasn't insanely high. As for the most recent series of 3 polls, there was also a lively debate preceding and/or during voting on all of them, both in the lobby and on the forum.

Two threads in particular that IIRC have stuff in them, one is 4 pages long and the other 6 pages long:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2320&start=0
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2248&start=0

I think we specified it very clearly, there should have been no way you could have misinterpreted what we were saying. Especially since you are the administrator and are aware of everything going on in the game.

I think we've been over this... I did not misunderstand what you intended to request.

Communication is not an issue here. Whether it was intentionally or not, you have misinterpreted our request and made this clear by saying we were asking for something that we already had.

I think we've been over this... I did not misunderstand what you intended to request.

You sir appear to be the failure, not I. http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5426/pr00f.jpg
We left plenty of information to you to respond to and you decided to ignore it and lock the topic. This is something a good admin would not do.

Something tells me I've addressed this...

25 people being banned in one and a half years is clear evidence that glitching has become less common. Three years ago we generally 25 banned every month or two

You're making some assumptions here that aren't very good. You can't compare the number banned per time period like you are and say that's evidence for less glitching, unless you're exclusively concerned about the raw numbers, which is silly because it's the frequency of cheating and/or concentration of cheaters that actually matters here. The old servers, three years ago, had a MUCH larger player pool across both games, and we have a much lower player pool.

Also, you're assuming that the amount of banned people accurately reflects the amount of people who cheat, failing to realize there are two types of cheaters, the smart ones and the retarded ones, and it's the retarded ones who usually get busted. The smart ones understand how the cheats work, and how people can catch them, and as such adjust their cheating so that it's extremely unlikely or impossible for anyone to be able to prove anything, such as some moderate glitching in a 2 hour long pre game--they can glitch enough to shift the game in their favor, and good luck proving anything.

Then shouldn't this tell you that people don't care about people that cheat in their games enough to justify the removal of the ability to tribute or custom chat?

No. Why do you think that it would?

You're right I don't have real evidence but like I said, I never run into glitchers anymore and I know few people who have. The point of what I am saying is there is not enough of a problem to make the removal of tributes and custom chat a sensable action.

You have anecdotal evidence. Fantastic.

Based on your anecdotal evidence of how many people cheat now, your opinion on the harm of people cheating to you/others/this game, your opinion as to how sufficient reporting people is, et cetera, you've concluded that there isn't enough of a problem to justify the actions taken.

Of course, that means it's just your opinion. The opinion of a vast majority of EE players is otherwise with regards to tributes, and an even larger majority's opinion is otherwise when it comes to custom chat.

I have not assumed you have done nothing but I was primarily referring to reporting cheaters via screenshot and math rather than doing something as big as the removal or some of the game's major features. If people were finding that people glitched in 90% of their games and 50 people got banned each week then perhaps this would justify taking away the ability to tribute. This has not been done though and this is what I was referring to by saying "we have not exhausted all other options".

Fair enough. It seems like we simply have a disagreement over whether or not the choice should have been offered to the community here. I've addressed that in this post previously.

But then I would not be able to play with other people which would be very counterproductive.

Remember version 1.1? I do. About 40% of the community was strongly opposed to a few changes in it, and thus refused to use it. Of those that were using it, many of them also expressed a dislike for those changes as well, but they simply didn't care enough to not use it. During this time, you could find both patched and unpatched games. You would also find people switching back and forth, even though it was clumsy and time consuming to do so.

If a lot of people really didn't like this change, I suspect you'd have no trouble at all finding people to play with. You certainly have at least 4.

Either way, what you're saying isn't even remotely valid, because changing patches is extremely quick and easy. It would take mere seconds to change from unpatched to patched, or the other way around, so it's not like you're going to have any trouble finding others to play with one way or another.

I understand what the community voted for as a whole. You do not need to say it 10 times per post. Saying this in every paragraph will not help things much. Can you at least answer one specific question, why is it so hard for people to report cheaters like we did back in the day at VUG? Are people really that stupid where we need to eliminate tributes to prevent glitching?

It is clear that the community voted for this but that still doesn't justify the fact that this is not a proportional action to the problem we had. I know very few people that think glitching was a problem on EE. Again read what I said above " If people were finding that people glitched in 90% of their games and 50 people got banned each week then perhaps this would justify taking away the ability to tribute. This has not been done though and this is what I was referring to by saying "we have not exhausted all other options"."

I keep repeating that because I'm still not sure if the full weight of it has sunk in yet. I've also repeated a other things that you haven't seemed to notice at all, so it's a pretty safe assumption IMO.

I believe I have answered the question as to why a lot of users have difficulty with reporting cheaters, at least twice, and part of it that people are stupid, yes.

In your opinion, it's not proportional to the problem, but if the community thought that way they wouldn't have voted how they did. Also, how many people who you know think X doesn't really matter, especially since people with similar beliefs/opinions tend to cluster together, a lot of people don't understand this, and I've gotten whispers from people about how "everyone" voted for option C because the 10ish people they talked to voted for C as the first choice, and the same for option A.

Unfortunately it wasn't because you misinterpreted something that we made pretty clear. Its really not important anymore but there was no reason for comments like "Oh, and request granted, because the Tribute Screen is still there".

For the last time, I didn't misinterpret anything, even though you guys didn't make yourselves very clear. If you think you did, go read through that thread and pretend you know nothing about EE, and if you're honest you'd conclude that you were infact asking for the tribute screen back. Now, pretend that you're a player from the old sever who hasn't played on this system and knows nothing of the patch, again you'd conclude that you were talking about the tribute screen. Only someone with knowledge of the current situation, and an idea or knowledge that you've played recently, would even be able to conclude that you were in fact talking about the ability to send tributes, not the tribute screen. Also, I've already answered this like 8 times.

[Oldspice]

omega stop giving these gays so much attention. the reason they continue their shinanigans is because you are giving them attention. All these guys are either 16 or younger, so arguing against them is pointless.

[Sexacutioner]

omega stop giving these gays so much attention. the reason they continue their shinanigans is because you are giving them attention. All these guys are either 16 or younger, so arguing against them is pointless.

this comes from experience ?

[nick11]

The first thing I thought when I read through this thread is...

"Lol, wut."

[Oldspice]

omega stop giving these gays so much attention. the reason they continue their shinanigans is because you are giving them attention. All these guys are either 16 or younger, so arguing against them is pointless.

this comes from experience ?

yes

[Nicoly23]

omega stop giving these gays so much attention. the reason they continue their shinanigans is because you are giving them attention. All these guys are either 16 or younger, so arguing against them is pointless.

Oh look another Troll trying to get some attention in a thread, you know for the record, you're giving us attention just by posting in here haha, and we're 17 and older, not 16. Also, there is no argument here, just a simple conversation between peoples.

The first thing I thought when I read through this thread is...

"Lol, wut."

I Concur, Good sir Lol.

[HK47]

I have such a hangover.
Sexa would be proud. Rofl

Yeah but omega you never answered my post! Meanie D:

[Moo]

Gentlemen,

I see that the tribute screen is safe
Well guys good luck attacking the site
You guys would think after all the references of TF2's spy I made it might have given you a clue
(PROTIP: google Gentlemen )

[Omega]

The screenshot that Pelie posted, FYI, is not Photoshopped.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It's GIMPed.
Thank the combined forces of XWarrior411 and Moo.
Oh, and if you haven't already guessed, it was Moo who gave me the screen shots.

Moo says I should upload this attachment, so I am.