Syncing, is it against the rules?

Really? Please call ANet to unban all the people that repeatedly killed the doppleganger earning 50k XP each time. They got permanently banned for EXPLOITING.
They didn´t alter code, sniff packets or used convoluted methods too! Still got banned for EXPLOITING.

The effect of number of players is rather bigger than you imply. If there's 4 synchers and only a total of 8 players, the probability that you're alone in your team is just 15%, making synching viable even given effective randomization.
However, if there's 4 synchers and 100 players, the probability that you're the only syncher in the team is 96%, basically making synching impossible (exact numbers subject to saturday haziness, but they should be about right).

IF there was effective randomization of the player pools, that is.

The prevalence of synch-teams during the double-points weekend, when far more players than normal were playing, would suggest synching is not just a case of few people playing, but of inadequate/nonexistent randomization of the player pool.

This is why I stop playing in RA too many sync groups.

First, correlation does not imply causation.

Second, there is no such thing as random when it comes to computers. There is only pseudo-random.

Third, unless we were to do some scientific analysis of the number of players joining teams each and every thirty seconds, there is no way to determine whether Anet's code is buggy and prone toward exploitation.

One thing we can certainly deduce is that having people sync will statistically improve their odds of being on the same team, under all circumstances.

The only real recourse is to /report players for leaving when they do no sync properly.

This is a player problem that coding will not fix. Sure, you could write some convoluted code that tracks all players and cross links them to all other players, but personally, given Anet's limited resources, I'd rather that they spend their time skill balancing and upgrading the HoM.

not long time ago I put it in Game Bugs ...all I got was a in my face.

That's because this isn't a bug.

I am pretty sure that presudorandomness will not show-off by incredibly often putting people with same guild tags to same team.

You are not getting what pseudorandomness really means, or you are stuck in atari era. Nowadays generation of rnd generators will not produce human-recognizable pattern. You could spend your whole life trying to find one in generator output. Pseudorandomness does not mean that you will get funny kind of patterns either.

We know that syncing does not become harder with huge player pool (ra events), so it does not work by picking people randomply from pool of waiting players. So we can stop bringing "pseudorandon rng gen"

Most likely, there is queue and teams are formed by taking 4 players from top of queue.

(Unless you want to claim that rnd generator follows rules of narative probability where 1-in-million chances happen in 9 cases out of 10. having 100 people and 4 sycers ending same team is exactly that.)

Well, I have 10+ years experience with optimization, simulation, algorithms, heuristics, and GA's, so I'm pretty certain that I understand what pseudorandom means. Having said that, you're right, it won't show up in the type of discussions we're having here. It does show up when I run simulations covering several years using millions of data points. I just get annoyed when people use the term "random" incorrectly.

I would suggest that the issue is not with the random number generator, rather in the method of our observation. That is the subjective part of this entire discussion. We really have no idea how many people are joining in RA at any given 30 second period, so we can make no conclusions regarding the effectiveness of their code.

Having said that, your suggestion that they just grab the players from the top of the queue and use no random allocation at all may well be true. That makes all of our arguments moot.

It boggles my mind every time I see large portions of the community turn out insisting on a rule change for something like this. The logic of these arguments always runs like this:

I do not like the present system. You should change the system to reflect MY preferences. You should do this because of 'X' moral/ethical principle.

In this case, the principle is that the designers did not intend for RA groups to be non-random.

Why can't you people simply adapt to circumstance? If you take RA so seriously that you can't deal with syncers, why don't you simply game the system the way other people are gaming it? Make some skilled friends and sync yourself if it bothers you that much.

If that doesn't work for you, organize an RA boycott. Make it clear to the devs that lots of people hate syncing with evidence! Don't just come to a forum and complain about it. Make your complaint impossible to ignore. In short, do something to solve the problem!

Is it so important that a game run exactly the way you think it should? You did not design it. Is your happiness so important that it outweighs the happiness of others enough to merit a change in the system?

If you expect the world around you to adapt itself to that which you believe to be "right" or "just", you're going to be sorely disappointed throughout your entire life. Take the world as it is and live in it. Adapt your own actions to your ethical principles and the systems you live in. If you want something, take an action that makes it more likely that you'll get what you want!

Actually the developers called it an exploit, but how would they know, they just designed the game right? http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/ArenaNeteveloper_updates#.5BDev_Update.5D_Guild_ Battles_-_25_September_2008 What? You yourself both justified and said it wasn't an exploit on page 2. I explained that it was soon after so it's good that you left that part out of my quote or you might have looked foolish. And if you read other posts its clear that people are discussing both aspects of it so in the words of our dear friend Master of Whispers, "Everyone needs a hobby. Let me guess... yours is failure?"

True enough but ANET and most people don't really give a hoot about RA. It's like an unpainted corner in a basement closet; sure it'd be nice to buy a can of paint and touch it up but is it worth the effort?

The concept of fairness and level playing field - they mean nothing to you?
Your argument simply boils down to that you've found a way to get an unfair advantage over other players, and like it.
Who says I don't? I go to the "synching-districts", press enter, wait until the counter hits 3 seconds, click cancel, and re-enter. This to improve my chances of parasitizing on a synch-team.

Actually the chance of being alone is much higher than that.

I don't think the larger number of synch teams is proof of randomization. I believe that is more social. The double point weekends attract a certain type of player. *cough*RA farmer*cough* I would believe that most of the people playing are trying to sync.

I also don't think the numbers improve the drasticly during the double point weekends. I have been playing some RA on the double point weekends when the counter reset becuase there were no opponents.

Sort of off topic:
I think that most of the syncing would go away if there where no Gladiator points from RA. Although I think RA would be pretty empty if there where no Gladiator points. Darned if you do, darned if you don't.

Martin,

It boggles my mind every time I see someone complaining about large portions of the community insisting on a rule change for something like this. Ignoring all the of legit points and sensible posts, that person will concentrate on those arguments where the logic always runs like this:

I do not like the present system. You should change the system to reflect MY preferences. You should do this because of 'X' moral/ethical principle.

In this case, the principle is that the designers did not intend for Random Arena groups to be non-random.

Why can't you simply adapt to circumstance? If you take people complaining about something so seriously that you can't deal with their posts, why don't you simply game the system the way other people are gaming it? Read the title and don't enter the topic if it bothers you that much.

If that doesn't work for you, organize a forum/topic boycott. Make it clear to the mods and community that lots of people hate others opinions with evidence! Don't just come to a forum and complain about it. Make your complaint impossible to ignore. In short, gtfo and do something to solve the problem!

Is it so important that a forum run exactly the way you think it should? You did not design it. Is your happiness so important that it outweighs the happiness of others enough to merit a change in the system?

If you expect the world around you to adapt itself to that which you believe to be "right" or "just", you're going to be sorely disappointed throughout your entire life. Take the world as it is and live in it. Adapt your own actions to your ethical principles and the systems you live in. If you want something, take an action that makes it more likely that you'll get what you want!

lul

I don't really care if it is an exploit or not. In my opinion players SHOULD be using exploits until the company actually fixes the problem. To me exploits are simply a way to show the devs what to fix in the game. To me this isn't an exploit though.

Also LoL at people calling Build Wars an exploit. Both of these "exploits" have been in existence for years, and if the company doesn't fix them its their problem not ours.

Taki:

The short version of what follows is this. I argued that players in favor of a change to syncing should stop moralizing about it and start doing something to make it clear to ANet that the community actually favors their position.

You argue that I should go away and keep my opinions to myself.

Who has the problem with whose post?

If you don't care about logic, you needn't bother to read further. It appears that you are attempting to use rhetoric rather than substance here to make your point. But if you care to read something that develops arguments and substantiates them, be my guest.

I hear that arguments trump rhetoric any day of the week. Except maybe in politics.

You, sir, fail at logic. Strip away all the rhetoric and the logical argument requesting the change boils down precisely as I have stated it. There is no reason to eliminate "syncing" other than that it is "wrong".

Syncing does not create behavioral consequences that go beyond syncing.

It doesn't threaten to undo the efforts of players by undermining the economy.

It doesn't meaningfully change who runs around with high gladiator rank.

It doesn't limit the environment to the point where only an extremely limited number of character builds are viable.

In short, syncing creates no catastrophic externalities justifying its removal, which is the usual underlying reason for making a balance change in this game (whether ANet states this or not).

So, then, any "justice" argument rests on ANet's definition of "exploit". But I have argued elsewhere that ANet's "exploit" policy is written by its lawyers for legal reasons, and that policy is as follows:

"Anything that we define to be an exploit is an exploit."

This conclusion is the necessary one, since there has not been consistency in prior enforcement of "exploits" or any established definition of "exploit". In principle, users of anything that has been called an "exploit" by the devs is to be banned. But this doesn't consistently happen. Syncing is an excellent example. I can name numerous others if you want. HM Urgoz farming comes immediately to mind as an incident where users of an "exploit" went unpunished.

The boundary line between "exploit" and "intelligent application of existing rules" remains unclear. To paraphrase Gaile Gray, an "exploit" is anything where the devs feel that that players do something that they "obviously" should not be able to. The issue is that what the devs consider "obvious" may not be as such to players.

Now, I didn't go into this level of depth in the original post, because most people don't care to read something with this level of detail. But since responding to your critique requires supporting this point, I have done so.

Ah, censorship! So if I don't agree with you, I should remain silent. But taking action in this situation requires that I explain to people the fallacies in their reasoning. I have done PRECISELY that. See, I took an action, which was to point out the faulty reasoning being used to justify these arguments. I also recommended an action - which was for the posters to organize and voice their opinion in a fashion that is impossible to ignore. I didn't tell them to be silent or gtfo; I told them to quit being lazy.

It is evident from the content of this thread that there are people that favor syncing. I don't have a strong preference one way or the other. Ignoring the clear fact that there is a significant proportion of the community that prefers the system "as is", however, is ridiculous.

There is NO evidence one way or the other on how the community actually feels about syncing. The burden of proof necessarily rests on those that prefer a change. I have merely suggested that mere complaining is wrongheaded. ANet doesn't care about right and wrong; nor should they. They care about what makes them money. They have a responsibility to their owners to put that first.

Consequently, any argument that will persuade the developers to make a change must be rooted in the following grounds: "It will cost you more business to ignore this problem than to fix it." I have suggested how you go about doing that. Complaining on forums about the problem won't do it, unless the volume of complaints is so large that the problem becomes impossible to ignore. However, any rational actor should see that in such a case, one more complaint is meaningless and that one should simply free-ride, rather than expend effort complaining.

It is clear enough from the thread that there are people on both sides of the issue. So, if you want to fix the problem, demonstrate that opinion favors your side. This is a persistent issue, it's not clear where the community stands, and one more thread on the matter isn't going to change the situation.

Again, I didn't go into this level of detail originally, because it shouldn't be necessary. Since it appears that it is, I have developed this point further.

If you want to continue to conduct a war of words, I am happy to continue to expose the flaws in your reasoning.


I missed this post earlier:

If you want "fairness" and "level playing field", play minigames where everyone gets the same skills. I do so (WAY more than I ever venture down to RA) and I enjoy those environments.

These concepts are laughable in a standard GW PvP environment. In organized team play, networking > skill. In a random assignment format, luck of the draw on the skill level and bars of teammates' > one's own player skill. Players are merely acting to minimize the luck factor here, which is what you find objectionable.

Have you considered that some players don't necessarily prefer winning for its own sake or care about gladiator points? It's extremely satisfying to beat a sync team with three randoms. A good sync vs. sync RA battle can be much more satisfying and skill-based than a good TA fight, because the TA environment is usually dominated by one build or another and is therefore either Build Wars or mirror matches.

There are alternative explanations for not caring about syncing that you haven't considered. If I were arguing in favor, I would argue that:

1) on an occasional basis, it can be enjoyable (I haven't played RA in weeks, and haven't synced since the spring)
2) it sometimes creates interesting matchups that do not otherwise occur in GW.

On topic: it is clearly an exploit that gives the players syncing an unfair advantage. I've been in round where all 3 other players had the same name tag and were clearly on some sort of a voice chat program. Although that particular run gave me 17 consec wins.

So think about it as bad weather, until its gone you might as well enjoy it.

The basic argument against syncing can be summed up fairly simply:

1) Random Arenas are intended to create random collections of players for PvP combat.

2) Team arenas are intended to create small teams to combat each other in PvP.

If you agree with the above, then it should follow that Random Arenas are intended to be just that, random, and that syncing is against the spirit of RA. That said, it is really a player problem rather than a system problem. They may decide to address it, but there are other ways to do that. A simple change to the EULA would solve this.

Personally i have stopped RAing until it gets changed.

uhh...yes it is.

I'm not going to argue whether or not syncing actually matters, but trying to say it is not a bug is false. I work as a Senior QA tester at a major developer ( and have worked as a regular tester in publishing companies ) , and the definition of what is a bug and what's not a bug is very loose. By QA standards anything that goes against what the original designers intention of the games functionality is supposed to be reported as a bug. This standard is the same in almost every single gamedev company.

I think its pretty obvious that the intention of random arenas was unorganized teams. I wouldn't be surprised if syncing is already in Anet's bug database. Thing is, syncing is not 100% repeatable ( damn close, but not ) and is in a nonsense arena anyways...meaning that its going to be classed as a C rank bug ( low priority B at best ) and ignored until they have nothing better to do.

IMO a better fix would be to just leave syncing as it is and Remove the glad title from RA. Once teams win 10 in RA and move on to TA then they can start earning glad points.

when people present you with facts you look it up, i am sure you are using a computer to type that word Proof? And must have a web browser and can visit a website call http://www.google.com/ which is a search engine

but if you like spoon feeding: it is called Ludology

Chocobo1 - who sync.

Let me ask you this:
What do you do when you do not get to into a group with the people that you wanted to sync with?

be honest, which one do you do?
1) leave
2) leave after finishing the first game even if your group has won leaving them with 3 players and most players get frustrated after that and leave?
3) /resign
4) charges into the opponent and die when the group won't die fast so you can leave?

Why do people get all pissed off when they get robbed? I mean, if you can't deal with getting your stuff taken all the time, why don't you just get a gang together and rob some people yourself? Pansies.


Worst. Argument. Ever.

You are wrong. When people want to have a fact, you must present it. It's as bad as trying to have Wikipedia as a reliable source of information. It is not spoon feeding, it is called having a decent argument but from the lack of intelligence from your previous posts, I wouldn't expect anything more. Try using the P.E.E chain method (Point, Evidence, Explain) as starting point.

ah nevermind not important

Yes very mind boggling, isn't it, THAT LARGER PART OF THE COMMUNITY IS SYNCHERS.

I can only laugh at the comment above like that extremely mind bogglling, ain't it, naming a part of your game Random Arena and not intent it to be random, harmz let me see. they must not have meant for it to be random, must be reverse psychology.

What the hell are you talking about, It is precisely because players DO NOT WANT TO ADAPT THAT THEY SYNC. If they have adapted, they would have gone over to play TEAM ARENA. It is the non-syncher who is adapting everyday, having other players leaving their group and getting wipe out on 9 consecutive wins by a sync/cheat group.

SIGN PLEASE and THANK YOU FOR SUPPORT

^^^ you should ask synchers that, are their happiness so much more important that the rest of the playerbase that does not sync should adapt to them?

No, In real life I am the shark, the world has to revolve around me This is play world, It is not serious business, and because it is not serious business, I want it to not suck because synching cheater spoil it.

There's no such thing as 'random', to be honest. It's picked out by the system by some means, we just don't get to watch it done.

Even so, syncing is still a 'random' process, although it involves loading the dice to a degree.

Most of the people that I know who sync RA just want to mess around with one or more of their friends without the serious organization of TA. It's not quite as nefarious as you seem to suggest. There are some who just want the easy wins, but that's a player problem rather than a major hole in the system.

Explain to me how pressing enter battle the same time as a friend to get into the same party is a bug. It's bad programming, not a bug.

If you read the rest of my post, you will see I already explained that. The definition of a bug in Game development terms is anything that goes against the original designers intention of how the feature should function. Anything that lets players make an arena that was designed to be random act like an arena that was designed to be used with pre-constructed teams would most definitely be considered a bug, regardless of how the exploit is achieved.

PS-Note: Exploits are seen as bugs and are placed in the same database. The only true difference between an exploit and a bug is that an exploit can be used by the player to gain an advantage.

me and a few of my friends well 3...went to jap dis and i cant believe it worked but all 4 of us got in perfect sync in RA...

A way to stop it don't match gamers up from the same district unless there's only 1 district, RA has at least 3 districts for most of the day, but i am guessing the system wasn't designed like that.

You did argue that and I agree. People should take action instead of expending as much effort bitching as you did in making your post. But that's only as long as that something is important enough to take action about - which RA really is not. You also took the position that if they 'can't beat 'em, join 'em', which is sound advice for anyone involved in a sandbox fight. For anyone older than that, not so much.

Now, I "argued" that you should stop being a hypocrite, complaining about complaining, and stop voluntarily putting yourself in a position where there's complaining going on. Or take your own advice and grab the mods by the bells so they can't ignore you and force them to listen to your idea about banning any complaining or criticism on the forum.

Furthermore, complaining is a very important part in the whole process of action. Here's how it works:

1. Someone complains about X.
2. Others complains about X as well or tell Someone to stfu, "it's just you"
3. If enough people share the same complaint then they have something to work with
4. If it's worth doing something about, they begin taking action to rectify the problem
5. For ANET/GW, that action is posting on a fansite as directed by customer service where they say they will later review it.

You're telling people to stop doing that, attempting to maliciously intervene in the people's right to bitch. Do you know what you are, Martin?

You're a blocker. That's what you are.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for your logic

You have nothing to substantiate this with but it doesn't matter. The behavioral consequences that syncing does create is negative enough.

Where are you right now? There is no such thing as an economy in GW PvP to even be undermined in the first place. It's team build and player skill against team build and player skill. Not phat l00tz vs phater l00tz. You don't seem to be on Earth with me on this one but don't worry, I'll reel you back in right quick.

Again, where are you going with this? Titles, Glad rank in this case, mean absoutely nothing in GW besides time invested. But for the sake of argument lets say that Glad Rank was a critical component in the game. By intentionally bypassing the random team handicap that other players have syncers are forcing an unintended disadvantage on others, making it increasingly difficult for them to progress in the title track by defeating the weaker random teams while making it increasingly easier for the non-random team in the random arena. It's like playing Marco Polo with you're eyes open, against the blind.

Right, it doesn't. But this isn't the Norn tournament in PvE. The format and game isn't about character versus character. In RA it's supposed to be 4 random players and bars versus another 4 random players and bars. Syncing destroys that.

The only catastrophic externalities I remember is Prot Bond allegedly causing the servers to crash and Sig of Might killing Guild Lords and anything else after 10secs instead of just allied spirits. I'm pretty sure there's been more than just two balance updates to fix those two things though. So maybe ANET has more than just catastrophic externalities as their usual underlying reason behind balance updates. Maybe.

I like syncing.
When I am doing it.

Otherwise I oppose.
But only if I lose.

Really, syncing is NOT that big of a problem.

Honestly, I've played a few hundred hours (sad I know) of RA and have only come across sync teams like, a dozen times. Most of the time in RA, if you get steam rolled or run into a group of 4 guys who have builds that match up all too well, people just assume "oh they must be syncers" when really, random means sometimes 4 good players with 4 bars that mesh together will get teamed up every once in a while. It's only an obvious sync if they all have the same guild tag.

Really, it does NOT happen that often and is not as big of a problem as everybody is letting on.

and that's why everyone here bitching about it is bitching about it.


i wouldn't call it cheating because it's simply trying to use your knowledge of the game mechanics to try and get better odds at what you wish.

but saying that knowledge of game mechanics is an exploit is like telling me that a 55 monk is an exploit, because it take a mechanic meant for keeping someone alive against a spike with prot spirit and makes a person with low health an regen indefinitely alive. as Avarre said, life sucks, then you RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOing die, get over it.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No.

don't you mean:

NNOooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooOOOOOOOOOOO



?

I sometimes sync with a friend i think it isnt that bad. But with a whole team is a different story.

Yeah totally.

Random arena is... random : breaking the flaws of the system is breaking the rules : or cheating if you prefer.
Best answer to this imo is to lock the access to other districts in Random Arena, other than your game client's district & international district.
Syncjoining became important when they opened all the districts, especially chinese, korean, polish and recently japanese.

And as has been pointed out that is a bullshit semantic argument: computer pseudorandom is indistinguishable from true random for the user.
It's random much like using marked cards in poker is random.
They want easy wins instead of hard losses, because it's more fun to win than lose.
EDIT: But let's run with that. Should 2-3 man teams, padded at match start with random players, be allowed in RA? I can see arguments both for (like that it'd bring the synching out in the open and make it a sanctioned form of play, and that it'd lessen the risk for three monk teams) and against (it'd increase the organization required to win in RA, making it almost as unfriendly to casual play as TA).

Wait, arguing over semantic bullshit isn't the point of this entire thread?

Huh, you got me there, I guess.

Actions not-covered by law are not necessary legal. Actions not mentioned in the EULA are not necessarily unpunishable either. I have not seen so many justifications of cheating in whole my life like I have seen in this thread.

From EULA
a) NC Interactive reserves the right to suspend or terminate this Agreement (including your Software license and your Account) immediately and without notice if you breach this Agreement or willfully infringe any third party intellectual property rights, or if we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us, or upon game play, chat or any player activity whatsoever which is, in our sole discretion, inappropriate and/or in violation of the spirit of the Game(s) as described in the Rules of Conduct.

Of course making teams in random arenas fits perfectly with the spirit of the game....

And in the Rules of Conduct:

You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars. Bugs should be promptly reported via "Ask a Question" at http://support.guildwars.com.

Now it is just enough as Pumpkin Pie wrote to convince Anet that possibility of synching in RA is a bug....

The difference here is that there is no method of prevention in place for syncing and there is no penalty for syncing. If somebody said marked cards were legal and I wouldn't have any penalty for doing it, I would be stupid not to.