Togepi and myself collaborated on a pastebin to investigate Zwink, CocaCola, and RadioFire90 in Round 310. Understand that the pastebin itself isn't the cleanest; rather our two bins were just put into one big bin because Togepi and myself are exhausted (I myself apologize for the poor formatting in my half, it's pretty bad) Nevertheless, the evidence is there. Other evidence was submitted by another user as well which helped us reach our verdict. Three moderators (Togepi, Sims, and myself) were involved in agreeing to the following verdict:
We have not concluded that cheating occurred between Zwink, CocaCola, and/or RadioFire90. We did however, have reason to believe that meta abuse occurred in Round 310 within this group.
The Verdict: Cocacola is going to be banned from winning trophies for 3 months due to meta abuse in the form of playing in favour of another user (Zwink) over the course of a Round. RadioFire90 is innocent. Zwink will be allowed to trophy this Round.
Cocacola will still be allowed to play gold heart games during this trophy ban. We (Togepi, Sims & myself) believe that Zwink's run in Round 310 was not tainted enough by CocaCola's meta abuse and interference to justify stripping Zwink of any possible trophy that she might win this round.
For those questioning the length of ban: Meta Abuse varies from situation to situation. The three moderators involved in this did not think that applying a Cheating violation to CocaCola would be appropriate in this particular instance, so we felt that the most fitting consequence would be to apply a ban on winning trophies for 3 months--half of what a normal cheating violation calls for. CocaCola and all of their alts will also be monitored whenever they are playing games with Zwink from now on in Competitive Rounds.
I agree with guyfawkes. When I play with any of the people I really like, I am less likely to n1 them, and more likely to gun them etc etc etc. Heck, I am even more likely to gun or protect people because I like their cute avi more than a noavi. It's not about meta abuse, it's just that if the game demanded that people Random n1'd or random gun'd/investigated/etc on n1 --- (or any other time where some kind of reason that is pertinent to the game is not in play) --- then the admin would have just made a function that required a truly random selection picked by the computer.
deleteddeletedabout 11 years ago
I think this is exactly what happened and this is also the reason I lose so often when playing with close friends who happen to roll maf when I'm town-sided.
I agree with Tinkerer, quite probably if you check ANY couple of friends here on EM (it might be any pair you can think of, celebs or not) you'll have similar results. Coca's only fault is to have met Zwink in a round and to have played with her a good number of games, being often aligned the same (based on the stats Nahdia provided)
I was originally going to just comment on how this thread was even funnier than the last one, but, so as to not give the appearance of being a trolly lurker, I'll just say that, as unlikely as it is that Coca intentionally threw for Zwink, this is a good verdict. Non-punishments like this should be handed out more often. As it's less harsh than a ban, a trophy bar has less of an effect on the many innocents that would receive one (because let's face it, trophies are like medals for being a tryhard lol), while the people who actually cheat are foiled in their goal.
deleteddeletedabout 11 years ago
Hmm yes let's trophy bar anyone who feels bad for their friends loss
I think Nahdia has a very strong point, heck, even if you're not friends but know someone is running, you're less likely to shoot them. (I had this with Doctor/Kawa/Tim near end of round.) Because misfiring them feels worse than misfiring someone else and you're never 100% sure. I'm against the verdict.
I'm pretty sure that if you compare any two players that played a lot together over a certain amount of time you'd get some sort of similar results. This evidence is iffy as hell and feels a lot like confirmation bias.
Just wondering, who was involved in this pastebin. Very unclear
deleteddeletedabout 11 years agoedited
It's honestly something a lot of people are guilty of; you're playing comp games with your friend and you know they're trophy running, so you want to avoid lynching them because you want them to trophy. Since, you know, they're your friend.
The fact is though that on multiple occasions CocaCola seems to scumread Zwink but refuses to lynch her. I don't think this was him consciously thinking "I'm going to risk losing just to make sure Zwink wins." It was probably unconscious; he had a bias against lynching Zwink because Zwink is his friend and he could cost her a trophy if he lynches her, so he looks for ways to justify not lynching her.
deleteddeletedabout 11 years agoedited
It's not about misreading. Meta-abuse was a terrible way to frame it. It's about favoring which is sort of a Throwing Lite. CocaCola wasn't necessarily playing against his own win condition, but was subtly (and probably unconsciously in my opinion) playing towards someone else's win condition. Which means he wasn't playing to win himself. Which falls under GT.
Judging this kind of thing is extremely difficult and is, I'd say, the hardest thing to do as a moderator. This is one of the lightest punishments ever for what we felt was meta abuse. It was really close, and we know that what we did here would originally be seen as "precedent" except there is no precedent for meta abuse since each situation is unique. but we want to make it clear that it's not tolerated.
Out of 4 games where you were town and Zwink was mafia, you only lynch Zwink one of those and that's your second game together.
In the other three you either refuse to out a read on Zwink and try desperately to save her from being mislynched or you continually consider her as scum but end up deciding she is town in the end. You never have these sorts of strong doubts when Zwink is actually town. If you can read Zwink well like you claim then difference should be pretty clear but you failed to lynch Zwink regardless.
If I played against my own win condition, then how come their aren't any actual statistics to back up that fact? How was I convicted? There is so much wrong with the verdict the moderators involved came up with.
