group invites

[ThomPhoenix]

I\'ve never had any trouble with this anti invitespamming system. It would be nice to have an option to block the invites en tells from certain players. You would have 3 buttons uppon invite: accept, deny (no punishment for inviter) and block. With block being denying any current or future tells and invites. If players ever get spammed, they can simply click block and that\'s it, spamming gone. And the spammers can\'t complain because they don\'t get punishment, this would also prevent players from being getting punishment by accident because some guy \"accidentally\" clicked deny. Can someone see a possible \"exploit\" in this? If so, try to think of something to fix it.

added:
Well, you could put the blocks in some kind of log. If a certain person gets blocked very very much, a GM could go talk with him and if possible block his ability to invite or ban him. But this would only be used on extreme spammers.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by DaveG
You\'d need to create a new character for each test case to do what he\'s expecting.  It is going up when it\'s supposed to.

Edited to add:
Personally, as I already said, the better solution to all this stupidity would be to have invites not be such an annoyance.  We wouldn\'t need to go through all this if it was just some text popping up, with an option to respond.  :/

\"All this stupidity\"?  Just because people are suggesting that your system could be improved?

Originally posted by ThomPhoenix
I\'ve never had any trouble with this anti invitespamming system.

I have, but I\'m often making groups to help out new players or to participate in events.  Try having several \"5 on 5\" style duels that involve a few green players and see what happens.

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by DaveG
You\'d need to create a new character for each test case to do what he\'s expecting.  It is going up when it\'s supposed to.

But I honestly can\'t understand that. Why is the very first decline supposed to give you a 10 minute penalty?

[DaveG]

I\'m loosing track of this too...  I don\'t even care anymore.  The penalty was right for the case, I missread part of his long post.  I\'m sorry, I should\'ve gone over it in more detail.  I shouldn\'t have replied so fast if I didn\'t have the time to go over it better.  Sorry.

/me head explodes

I figured out what it was...  You can\'t just create a new character, you have to make a new account.  It jumpped the gun because you had SP from another character.  It was a 10 min penalty, because he started at kill level, and you always get a warning.

I just tested it on my build, and it\'s working fine.

[neko kyouran]

If I may ask, perhaps you would like to go into detail on exactly how the system works.  It would free up many misconceptions I belive.  

I, for one, was misinformed (not saying its any of your fault) about how the system goes down in severity levels.  As you see from my testing, I believed that it was based on accepts, not time.  But since you say it is based on time, perhaps you could provide detailed information on how long it takes to reduce the severity levels? I was under the information that the severity level would go back down, after I waited the said time of 10 minutes, and recieved a few accepts, but I see that this is not how it works.  Perhaps many others are also under this assumption, and that is why you see so many complaints.

Also, I was misinformed and believed that a new character would be good for testing, when as you say it carries over for all characters for every account.  That makes much more sence to me anyway, don\'t want spammers just creating multiple accounts to get around the rule.

I\'m a bit curious as to why my account is at the 3rd level to begin with, as I haven\'t used it for months (should have gone down with time a you say) and before that, I seriuosly don\'t ever recall having a time, that on the rare occassion that I did send an invite it, was declined (I never recieved the first warnings ever before on any of my characters that I can recall.), or when the new system was put into effect, were all acounts assigned this 3rd severity level, and if so, why would I still be at this 3rd level when I went to test?   Or does it log only hours that you are in game and not actual RL hours?  That would make sense to me.

So really, if you\'re not too busy, perhaps you could give us a detailed explanation on how it functions, so we can clear all this misinformation up?  Unless, it\'s already stated somewhere.  I will admit I didn\'t follow the rule of searching before posting this.  Meh, you have permission to shoot me I guess.

Also, I\'d love to actually help with the code rather than just QA tset, but I only have worked with VB  and SQL Server 2000 for the past 6 years, so I feel I\'m not qualified to help anymore than I already am.  I\'ll learn C, C++, C sharp, whatever variation the game is run on, eventually, I\'m just a bit busy with RL projects ATM.  I\'m sure you know how it is.  Thanks in advance.

[DaveG]

The code is quite simple, and as I keep saying (yet no one believes me) it\'s not glitched.  A few people (namely the guy that made me want to rewrite this in the first place...) seem to hate the system.  SP go up on denies, SP revert to 2 (now 1, as I made that change) on relog, can go down on an accept from someone with enough AP (there\'s voodoo involved... I honestly forget ), and will go down on any invite done after the SP+1 lockout time has passed since last invite attempt.  Lockout times are: 1, 5, 10, 30, 10.  (though, only the first 3 are really lockouts, and the others are just there for expiration times)  The system acts on invite attempts, not invitee decisions, because I wanted the system to discourage the people being penalized from using the system at all, for a while, and to prevent these people from focusing their junk on the person that clicked \"deny\".

Yes, this is very strict.  You couldn\'t walk into the plaza for more than a second without getting challenged, before.  However, most people have had no problems with this.  The only valid complaint was the fact that I made SP save to DB per account, which makes this system very persistent.  Saving only 1 point (which means first deny bumps to 2nd level), instead of up to 2, should aleiviate this.

Edited to add:
I might as well paste the voodoo

Code: [Select]

   if (accepted)
    {
        if (inviter->GetSpamPoints() && invitee->GetSpamPoints() <= 1
            && invitee->GetAdvisorPoints() >=
                   3*INVITESPAMBANTIME[inviter->GetSpamPoints()]*INVITESPAMBANTIME[invitee->GetSpamPoints()] )
        {
            // Lower spam points on accept from a sufficiently \"reputable\" player
            inviter->DecrementSpamPoints();
        }
    }
    else
    {
        inviter->IncrementSpamPoints();
    }Where:

Code: [Select]

static const int INVITESPAMBANTIME[5] = {1, 5, 10, // Ban times in minutes
                                         30, 10};  // spamPoints expire based on SP+1\'s ban time


If you want to look at the invite manager code in more detail, just click on the link in my signature.  

[neko kyouran]

Ah ok, that clears up my confusion.  And yep, from little C I know, you look solid on the code, but you already knew that, didn\'t you?

[zanzibar]

I hate your code?  Putting words in my mouth again, I see.


Maybe it\'s bugged.  Maybe it isn\'t.  Maybe the penalties are too harsh, and maybe they aren\'t.


Whatever the case may be, there\'s still fundamentally the potential for people to be punished who don\'t deserve to be punished.


And to me, the best way to solve this is to put the power of punishment in the hands of human beings!

[ThomPhoenix]

And to me, the best way to solve this is to put the power of punishment in the hands of human beings!

Please,do me a favor and play Battlefield 2, then you\'ll see what DaveG means. When you\'re killed by a team mate everyone automatically presses punish, even if it was their own fault. In PS it would probably be the same, someone\'s training somewhere, he\'s invited by someone and he automatically punishes him. Or things would go like this:

>Hi!
-Hello
>Want to join my group?
-Ofcourse
>*invites*
-*clicks punish*
>Erm, why?!?!
-Lol, u n00b.

Ofcourse this would also be possible with DaveG\'s system, but there\'s no perfect system, is there? Keep it as much automatic as possible seems the best thing to me, or my ignoring system should be implemented   Noboby responded to it by the way, what do you think of it?
*points to a few posts above this one*

Ofcourse there\'s also the possibility to use DaveG\'s system, but instead second or more deny\'s would cause the players\' skills to be debuffed. So he will get very weak if he spams a lot. This debuff would be temporary ofcourse.

[acraig]

Working as intended.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by ThomPhoenix
Please,do me a favor and play Battlefield 2, then you\'ll see what DaveG means. When you\'re killed by a team mate everyone automatically presses punish, even if it was their own fault. In PS it would probably be the same, someone\'s training somewhere, he\'s invited by someone and he automatically punishes him.

That\'s still better than the way it is right now.

Originally posted by ThomPhoenix
Or things would go like this:
>Hi!
-Hello
>Want to join my group?
-Ofcourse
>*invites*
-*clicks punish*
>Erm, why?!?!
-Lol, u n00b.

It\'s already possible for people to do this the way things are, since every decline counts as a warning.

[ThomPhoenix]

It\'s already possible for people to do this the way things are, since every decline counts as a warning.

I said that in my post  :O

Anyway, DaveG and Acraig both say that it\'s working as intended, and too few people are complaining (only 3) to have it changed.

Until lots of people complain or someone comes up with a really good system, this is pretty much end of story I guess.

[zanzibar]

Originally posted by ThomPhoenix

It\'s already possible for people to do this the way things are, since every decline counts as a warning.

I said that in my post  :O

Anyway, DaveG and Acraig both say that it\'s working as intended, and too few people are complaining (only 3) to have it changed.

Until lots of people complain or someone comes up with a really good system, this is pretty much end of story I guess.

I\'ve spoken to a lot of devs behind the scenes who agree with me though... it\'s unfortunate that Acraig is shooting down the idea.

And in my opinion, the system I proposed IS really good, and the system which is in place is NOT working as intended.  But hey, Acraig has spoken.