Alarming MP Free Agency thing

stevew · 03-04-2005, 08:28 PM

Hadnt realized this til the most recent patch came out. You dont have to input a password to get into your team. You can click on any player you made offers to and it will show your offer. The alarming thing being, that EVERYONE can now see your offers with about 2 seconds of work. Not saying that people would cheat, but now it would be virtually indectable, and basically untraceable.

scarface132 · 03-04-2005, 08:34 PM

that is pretty fucked.

Steve just told me one of my offers to a guy I just bid on, and was 100 percent correct.

VPI97 · 03-04-2005, 08:35 PM

Isn't it routine for an agent to tell teams what offers a player has received?

stevew · 03-04-2005, 08:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VPI97

Isn't it routine for an agent to tell teams what offers a player has received?

It may be, but now basically you could add a million here and there and get a guy probably.

Eaglesfan27 · 03-04-2005, 08:41 PM

I'm confused. Couldn't you always click on a player and see the number of years and total value of other offers?

VPI97 · 03-04-2005, 08:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevew

It may be, but now basically you could add a million here and there and get a guy probably.

If I have a high bid on a player in stage 2 of free agency, do you think I'm going to sit back and hope no one outbids me in stage 3? Same thing applies even if someone knows my offer...even if someone knows it, he's still got to beat it...and if he has the opportunity to beat it, I have the opportunity to raise mine.

stevew · 03-04-2005, 08:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

I'm confused. Couldn't you always click on a player and see the number of years and total value of other offers?

Now you can see the full breakdown. Bonus, yearly wages.

gottimd · 03-04-2005, 08:43 PM

I guess he means the exact breakdown year by year, by bonus, and any incentives. Rather than just seeing at the top right "Denver $3.5 M/ 1 year".

I may now be able to peer inside Pysers head and see if I can find a method to his madness.

gottimd · 03-04-2005, 08:45 PM

Dola-
Actually, who am I kidding, I am too lazy to switch to different teams and view the offers. I have to agree with VPI, if you are sitting at high offer in the early stages, and you see that there are a few other teams bidding, chances are that you will up your offer anyways, unless you are either a jackass or don't have the cap room.

yabanci · 03-04-2005, 08:47 PM

I never understood why Jim fell asleep at the wheel on multiplayer security, but that's the way it is.

Franklinnoble · 03-04-2005, 08:53 PM

MP would work better if it were able to be 100% server based... no shipping update files back and forth... just log into your league's FOF web server, and run the game from there.

Of course, handling licensing might be a challenge this way...

gottimd · 03-04-2005, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

MP would work better if it were able to be 100% server based... no shipping update files back and forth... just log into your league's FOF web server, and run the game from there.

Of course, handling licensing might be a challenge this way...

Agreed. The only way to handle that may be to register leagues through Solecismic, and each league gets 32 licenses. Or, after registering, you enter the License # of your game to join the league.

yabanci · 03-04-2005, 09:01 PM

couldn't there just be a simple password requirement to open a multiplayer games as a particular team?

gottimd · 03-04-2005, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yabanci

couldn't there just be a simple password requirement to open a multiplayer games as a particular team?

Who keeps the passwords though, the commissioner? GM's switch from time to time, so how do you handle that? Or do you write code into the game that identifies new GM's and asks for a password when they download the initial league file? What happens if you forget your password, any chance of recovery, or are you Fucked?

Franklinnoble · 03-04-2005, 09:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gottimd

Agreed. The only way to handle that may be to register leagues through Solecismic, and each league gets 32 licenses. Or, after registering, you enter the License # of your game to join the league.

Well, I'm thinking it'd be better just to have some mechanism on the server in place to register your eLicense information. Basically, you securely enter your license info in the web site (like when you first license the game on your PC), and it verifies that you're a paying customer.

This would probably take FOF into a realm of programming and web server support issues that Jim would never want to go... but, hey... how cool would that be? Web based FOF...

stevew · 03-04-2005, 09:09 PM

Surely it cannot be this hard to set a "master password" for the league file, and then give each individual team a password.

sovereignstar · 03-04-2005, 09:22 PM

This isn't really news to me. In the latest round of patches Jim made it so you could see what kind of offered you made to a guy the previous stage, ie it would save all of the offers. So basically this just means that you can take cheating to another level as you'd already be loading the game as another team.

The security in MP FOF is a joke and that hasn't been a secret to me since a couple of weeks after the game was released. I just do my best to pretend that it never happens.

gottimd · 03-04-2005, 09:26 PM

Other than the offers, there is nothing else you could do, correct? Unless you hacked the GM's email, or upload password to league sites. Even after knowing that I will probably take the same route of just ignoring this aspect.

Dutch · 03-04-2005, 09:33 PM

I still don't see where it's "alarming". If you are good enough to win at MP, you don't need to cheat in the first place. And if you are cheating to get a good player that other players are bidding on, it's already costing you an arm and a leg. And it doesn't guarantee anything if you land a stud FA. And in the end, it may give you a slight edge in an exciting championship game. But if you made it that far, you didn't have to cheat to get there. And if you cheated and won by 4 points....well, it's exciting to everybody but the cheater, I guess. Passwords might be nice, but they are not crucial to having an enjoyable MP experience.

yabanci · 03-04-2005, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gottimd

Who keeps the passwords though, the commissioner? GM's switch from time to time, so how do you handle that? Or do you write code into the game that identifies new GM's and asks for a password when they download the initial league file? What happens if you forget your password, any chance of recovery, or are you Fucked?

What I would like to see is thye game programmed such that when you go to the open multiplayer game dialog box to load the league with control of a particular team, you have to input a password. The commissioner would have the ability to reset passwords in case of a new or forgetful owner. I'm not a programmer so I don't know all the details, but I do know that where there is a will there is a way.

Vinatieri for Prez · 03-04-2005, 11:21 PM

Yeah, it's a non-issue. So what if people can see your offers -- same as real life. I think it's fine as is. The way I look at if someone is going through all that trouble, I am glad they are wasting their free time. Seriously, you still have to be able to afford all these players don't you. Plus, odds are the guy (or others) are going to up their offers in the next import. Plus, the basic years/total salary notice the game gives to everybody is a big enough clue as to who is going to sign the guy, anyways.

JeeberD · 03-04-2005, 11:41 PM

Much ado about nothing...

Pyser · 03-05-2005, 03:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gottimd

I may now be able to peer inside Pysers head and see if I can find a method to his madness.

You give one guy a 1 yr, $20mil contract, and suddenly you are crazy.

actually, wait, that WAS crazy!

flere-imsaho · 03-05-2005, 11:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yabanci

I never understood why Jim fell asleep at the wheel on multiplayer security, but that's the way it is.

Meh. I imagine he has to pick and choose features, and this wasn't high on the priority list. And I don't blame him for that. If someone wants to go to this level to cheat in a MP league, I'll just leave the league.

flere-imsaho · 03-05-2005, 11:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

MP would work better if it were able to be 100% server based... no shipping update files back and forth... just log into your league's FOF web server, and run the game from there.

Of course, handling licensing might be a challenge this way...

Not necessarily. Look at Half-Life (before Steam). Every client needed a license to be run, but hldm.exe (the server component) was available as a free download and needed no license to run.

In fact, what you're really looking for is what automated "judges" for online "Diplomacy" games do. Everyone sends in their orders to the "judge" program, and at a given time the "judge" runs the stage and releases the results.

I don't think this would be trivial to code, but I expect it would be the best way to implement such a concept.

What does this gain us, though? It doesn't necessarily remove the problem of being able to look at other teams as other teams. It does, however, remove some of the manual work from the Commissioners, which would probably be nice.

Of course, some Commissioners (like VPI, for instance) have effectively automated the whole process (or it looks that way, at least), so who knows....

Anyway, I'm just rambling now.

jeronemitchell · 03-05-2005, 12:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vinatieri for Prez

Yeah, it's a non-issue. So what if people can see your offers -- same as real life. I think it's fine as is.

I agree. Personally, I think we should have been able to see the details of other people's offers from the beginning. All this does is ensure the FA gets the best deal... so what's the problem?

I think what may be more alarming is if you can see the other person's strategies... does the game hold that information in one of the files that goes out to the league, or is that stored locally?

sovereignstar · 03-05-2005, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeronemitchell

I think what may be more alarming is if you can see the other person's strategies... does the game hold that information in one of the files that goes out to the league, or is that stored locally?

You can see guys' strategies as well, aka steal their gameplans. You could take it a step further and make yourself commissioner, steal your opponents' gameplan and match it against yours by doing a few sims.

jeronemitchell · 03-05-2005, 12:43 PM

Bleh. On the one hand, one could view that like "watching film of the other team" and planning accordingly... but that seems like a bit much.

I was planning on trying to customize my gameplans for each game... but now I'll DEFINITELY be customizing my gameplans for each game.

albionmoonlight · 03-05-2005, 02:13 PM

Can't you just make it against your league constitution to log in as someone else?

I'm pretty sure that that's how IHOF does it.

To the extent that you don't trust people in your league, then why are you in a league with them? I can see if money were riding on it or something, but it's about FUN. If you are not having fun because you keep wondering if people are cheating you, then leave the league. If everyone does that, then Jim will get the message sent to his bottom line. Maybe people are cheating me in IHOF; maybe not. I have more FUN not worrying about it, so I don't.

Getting into an arms race against cheaters/hackers never works anyway. Much easier to just go on trust.

Dutch · 03-05-2005, 07:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by albionmoonlight

Maybe people are cheating me in IHOF; maybe not.

I can assure you that anybody cheating against Joey Allen is doing a really piss-poor job of it.

yabanci · 03-06-2005, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yabanci

I never understood why Jim fell asleep at the wheel on multiplayer security, but that's the way it is.

I think this is an unfair statement and I take it back. We are extremely fortunate, in my opinion, to have multiplayer and can't expect a perfect system the first time around. I'm sure additional multiplayer security is something Jim has in mind for the future. We all know you can cheat if you want to, but let's hope everybody who plays in a multiplayer league respects other FOF enthusiasts enough not to do so.

KWhit · 03-06-2005, 12:55 PM

Damn. It never occurred to me that you could load the game as another team. I just never think about loopholes and exploits like that.

03-04-2005, 08:35 PM	#3
VPI97 Hokie, Hokie, Hokie, Hi Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Kennesaw, GA	Isn't it routine for an agent to tell teams what offers a player has received? __________________ CT & Jivin - "Surprisingly Entertaining"

03-04-2005, 08:41 PM	#5
Eaglesfan27 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: New Jersey	I'm confused. Couldn't you always click on a player and see the number of years and total value of other offers? __________________ Retired GM of the eNFL 2007 Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles (19-0 record.) GM of the WOOF 2006 Doggie Bowl Champion Atlantic City Gamblers. GM of the IHOF 2019 and 2022 IHOF Bowl Champion Asheville Axemen.

03-04-2005, 08:43 PM	#8
gottimd Dearly Missed (9/25/77-12/23/08) Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: DC Suburbs	I guess he means the exact breakdown year by year, by bonus, and any incentives. Rather than just seeing at the top right "Denver $3.5 M/ 1 year". I may now be able to peer inside Pysers head and see if I can find a method to his madness. __________________ NAFL New Orleans Saints GM/Co-Commish MP Career Record: 114-85 NAFL Super Bowl XI Champs In memory of Gavin Anthony: 7/22/08-7/26/08

03-04-2005, 08:45 PM	#9
gottimd Dearly Missed (9/25/77-12/23/08) Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: DC Suburbs	Dola- Actually, who am I kidding, I am too lazy to switch to different teams and view the offers. I have to agree with VPI, if you are sitting at high offer in the early stages, and you see that there are a few other teams bidding, chances are that you will up your offer anyways, unless you are either a jackass or don't have the cap room. __________________ NAFL New Orleans Saints GM/Co-Commish MP Career Record: 114-85 NAFL Super Bowl XI Champs In memory of Gavin Anthony: 7/22/08-7/26/08 Last edited by gottimd : 03-04-2005 at 08:45 PM.

03-04-2005, 09:26 PM	#18
gottimd Dearly Missed (9/25/77-12/23/08) Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: DC Suburbs	Other than the offers, there is nothing else you could do, correct? Unless you hacked the GM's email, or upload password to league sites. Even after knowing that I will probably take the same route of just ignoring this aspect. __________________ NAFL New Orleans Saints GM/Co-Commish MP Career Record: 114-85 NAFL Super Bowl XI Champs In memory of Gavin Anthony: 7/22/08-7/26/08

03-04-2005, 08:34 PM	#2
scarface132 Mascot Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Stockton Ca	that is pretty fucked. Steve just told me one of my offers to a guy I just bid on, and was 100 percent correct.

03-04-2005, 08:47 PM	#10
yabanci College Benchwarmer Join Date: Jun 2003	I never understood why Jim fell asleep at the wheel on multiplayer security, but that's the way it is.

03-04-2005, 08:53 PM	#11
Franklinnoble Banned Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Placerville, CA	MP would work better if it were able to be 100% server based... no shipping update files back and forth... just log into your league's FOF web server, and run the game from there. Of course, handling licensing might be a challenge this way...

03-04-2005, 09:01 PM	#13
yabanci College Benchwarmer Join Date: Jun 2003	couldn't there just be a simple password requirement to open a multiplayer games as a particular team?

03-04-2005, 09:09 PM	#16
stevew Hall Of Famer Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: the yo'	Surely it cannot be this hard to set a "master password" for the league file, and then give each individual team a password.

03-04-2005, 09:22 PM	#17
sovereignstar Pro Starter Join Date: Feb 2004	This isn't really news to me. In the latest round of patches Jim made it so you could see what kind of offered you made to a guy the previous stage, ie it would save all of the offers. So basically this just means that you can take cheating to another level as you'd already be loading the game as another team. The security in MP FOF is a joke and that hasn't been a secret to me since a couple of weeks after the game was released. I just do my best to pretend that it never happens.

03-04-2005, 09:33 PM	#19
Dutch "Dutch" Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Tampa, FL	I still don't see where it's "alarming". If you are good enough to win at MP, you don't need to cheat in the first place. And if you are cheating to get a good player that other players are bidding on, it's already costing you an arm and a leg. And it doesn't guarantee anything if you land a stud FA. And in the end, it may give you a slight edge in an exciting championship game. But if you made it that far, you didn't have to cheat to get there. And if you cheated and won by 4 points....well, it's exciting to everybody but the cheater, I guess. Passwords might be nice, but they are not crucial to having an enjoyable MP experience.

03-04-2005, 11:21 PM	#21
Vinatieri for Prez College Starter Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Seattle	Yeah, it's a non-issue. So what if people can see your offers -- same as real life. I think it's fine as is. The way I look at if someone is going through all that trouble, I am glad they are wasting their free time. Seriously, you still have to be able to afford all these players don't you. Plus, odds are the guy (or others) are going to up their offers in the next import. Plus, the basic years/total salary notice the game gives to everybody is a big enough clue as to who is going to sign the guy, anyways.

03-04-2005, 11:41 PM	#22
JeeberD General Manager Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: The Town of Flower Mound	Much ado about nothing... __________________ UTEP Miners!!! I solemnly swear to never cheer for TO

03-05-2005, 12:43 PM	#28
jeronemitchell n00b Join Date: May 2004	Bleh. On the one hand, one could view that like "watching film of the other team" and planning accordingly... but that seems like a bit much. I was planning on trying to customize my gameplans for each game... but now I'll DEFINITELY be customizing my gameplans for each game.

03-05-2005, 02:13 PM	#29
albionmoonlight Head Coach Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: North Carolina	Can't you just make it against your league constitution to log in as someone else? I'm pretty sure that that's how IHOF does it. To the extent that you don't trust people in your league, then why are you in a league with them? I can see if money were riding on it or something, but it's about FUN. If you are not having fun because you keep wondering if people are cheating you, then leave the league. If everyone does that, then Jim will get the message sent to his bottom line. Maybe people are cheating me in IHOF; maybe not. I have more FUN not worrying about it, so I don't. Getting into an arms race against cheaters/hackers never works anyway. Much easier to just go on trust.

03-06-2005, 12:55 PM	#32
KWhit Coordinator Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Conyers GA	Damn. It never occurred to me that you could load the game as another team. I just never think about loopholes and exploits like that.

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