Conquer Club

Accused:
ljex

The accused are suspected of:
Farming New Recruits

Game number(s):
Game 19827089
Game 19827061
Game 19826958
Game 19824637
Game 19824605
Game 19824528
Game 19824527
Game 19824524
Game 19824484
Game 19824473
Game 19824195
Game 19824145
Game 19824002
Game 19823999
Game 19823957
Game 19823950
Game 19823793
Game 19823724
Game 19819609
Game 19819584
Game 19819499
Game 19819430
Game 19819354
Game 19818579
Game 19817080
Game 19816792
Game 19816436
Game 19816029
Game 19815529
Game 19812624
Game 19808843
Game 19808826
Game 19808216
Game 19804595
Game 19804584
Game 19804578
Game 19804023
Game 19800881
Game 19795802
Game 19795764
Game 19795731
Game 19794510
Game 19794337
Game 19794285
Game 19792087

Comments:
Super sad.

Well before people get all bent out of shape, I am literally trying to give them a better experience by actually trying to play real time and then convince them to play a doubles game with me.

19824002
19823793
19794630
19794420

Games played as doubles with people who I first played against when they are a NR or where I tried to convince them to play doubles if they actually stayed for the game I joined and I played RT whenever they stayed if they wanted stayed as well.

Honestly it funny to me that years ago I actually did farm people with city mogul speed freestyle / oasis quads FS 24 hour games to get conqueror and don't remember getting any accusations but now I actually do this with good intentions and get a C&A thread. If this is against the rules then I am sorry, but it absolutely was not my intention to do this for points and quite frankly it would be easy to get to colonel without doing it. I even played random 1 vs 1 classic / lux games over the past 2 weeks I have been back on this site...why would i do that if i cared about rank?

If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

And say what in this PM to get them to stay? That I will play a game with them real time? And get accused of the same things and probably even worse for recruiting them to the games?

Honestly if i were a NR and got a PM I would have thought that was weird and not talked to the person. Believe what you want but would I really have called attention to myself in our doubles game if my intentions were for points? Like why would I bring attention to the situation if I felt I had something to hide? If it is illegal to join simple maps / settings and trying to get people to stay by playing real time for the first game and asking them to join doubles with you then I did that and feel free to punish me.

Did this result in a lot of people never even paying their first turn, sure but someone has to join games and I at least tried to make it a better experience for the newbies by playing fast and real time until they stopped taking turns

Honestly I don't get the whole farming thing, yes players are mostly inexperienced but some players come to the site knowing the basics about risk it's whether or not they stay for awhile is the problem. I do see ljex made an effort to talk to the new recruits in some games others not but hey I played against a new recruit the other day Game 19820098 and got my ass kicked. My first instinct was he was a multi! Theres no way! Well turns out he is clean. You may win some points but in the case of possibly finding a player who knows what he's doing, you could lose 40-50 pts in a game. Anyways my rant is over I'll let the C&A do their job.

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

Wouldn’t that give off pretty strong P@P farming vibes?

IcePack wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

Wouldn’t that give off pretty strong P@P farming vibes?

That depends on the context of the message lol?

iAmCaffeine wrote:

IcePack wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

Wouldn’t that give off pretty strong P@P farming vibes?

That depends on the context of the message lol?

I think you are actually kidding yourself that this would make you feel better about the situation of me playing new recruits.

*Pixar* wrote:Honestly I don't get the whole farming thing, yes players are mostly inexperienced but some players come to the site knowing the basics about risk it's whether or not they stay for awhile is the problem. I do see ljex made an effort to talk to the new recruits in some games others not but hey I played against a new recruit the other day Game 19820098 and got my ass kicked. My first instinct was he was a multi! Theres no way! Well turns out he is clean. You may win some points but in the case of possibly finding a player who knows what he's doing, you could lose 40-50 pts in a game. Anyways my rant is over I'll let the C&A do their job.

Generally would join when playing speed games as to ensure I was around to play RT if they were there and only joined games when they were on the first page (typically on the top) to try and make sure there was at least a chance that the game could be played real time and would try to message in the chat to welcome them but to be honest a lot of times if they went first and missed their first turn I wouldn't bother posting in the chat as I figured they weren't coming back. I am sure you can find games where I didn't do this perfectly, but this was my general process.

To add even more context to this, I looked it up and in the~ 2 weeks I have been back I have played ~500 games of which maybe 25-50 have been with NR's while at the same time playing ~20 lux games (along with other games on simple maps that are more luck based that I didn't care to look up). If my goal were truly to farm this would have been the stupidest way to do it.

1) Tell other people in a dubs game that I am doing it to bring attention to myself
2) Actually try to convince people that stick around to play together
3) At the same time I am farming play 90%+ (likely 95%+ but I don't have the time to actually look it up) of my games as non "farming" games of which many are on simple maps / settings that are not conducive to gaining points

Again if this is against the rules, I will accept whatever punishment is determined to be valid. It was not my intention to farm but I absolutely did play a substantial # of games against NR's over the last 2 weeks. You can choose to believe me or not but if I truly wanted to farm this is not how I would have done it.

ljex wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:

IcePack wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

Wouldn’t that give off pretty strong P@P farming vibes?

That depends on the context of the message lol?

I think you are actually kidding yourself that this would make you feel better about the situation of me playing new recruits.

My suggestion doesn't involve playing vs new recruits.

iAmCaffeine wrote:

ljex wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:

IcePack wrote:

iAmCaffeine wrote:If what you really care about is getting the new recruits to stay on the site, send them a PM. It's quicker, more personal and more efficient.

Wouldn’t that give off pretty strong P@P farming vibes?

That depends on the context of the message lol?

I think you are actually kidding yourself that this would make you feel better about the situation of me playing new recruits.

My suggestion doesn't involve playing vs new recruits.

So what exactly is the suggestion? PM them what? Have you done this to actually know that it is successful or are you just talking out of your ass because you think it may work? My personal thoughts would be that a PM does very little to encourage them to stay so I didn't do that. Could I be wrong, sure but if someone had posted somewhere that it worked I probably would have taken that up instead. As is I haven't seen any evidence to say this approach is successful so I will assume you are just making up an alternative.

At the end of the day you clearly are not going to change your opinion on me and that is fine but just ask yourself what was my motivation to do this? You are going to say points and that is great and all but do you really think it is hard for me to get to my current score with regular games? If that was my motivation why would I be playing doubles with randos and even trying to convince those people to play when they say they are bad and are going to affect my games? Why would I tell you about it in a doubles game if I felt I had something to hide?

Clearly you are going to believe what you want and I can't change that so I am not sure why I am even still trying.

I actually applaud ljex's behaviour in this one, trying to connect with NR's. You can check his claims by comparing the start time of the game to the last seen date on a NR's profile. If he actually would be farming for the sake of farming, he would be much smarter about it. In its current state he's just trying to get NRs a good experience on a standard map with a by-effect of farming them.

I'm also curious why one would be interested to play a doubles with someone when you're about to report your teammate Game 19822664

ljex wrote:So what exactly is the suggestion? PM them what?

If I set off on a campaign to try and improve the retention of new recruits, I would send a PM welcoming them to the website, briefly mention the SoC, give some general advice about maps and settings, then perhaps offer to play a 2v2 doubles game with them. I would not join a large number of games knowing that 90% of them would result in deadbeats and I could be seen to be farming.

ljex wrote:Have you done this to actually know that it is successful or are you just talking out of your ass because you think it may work?

I haven't done this exact thing but I've done similar in the past, yes. I have mentored many lower ranked and/or new players over the years, to varying degrees.

ljex wrote:My personal thoughts would be that a PM does very little to encourage them to stay so I didn't do that. Could I be wrong, sure but if someone had posted somewhere that it worked I probably would have taken that up instead. As is I haven't seen any evidence to say this approach is successful so I will assume you are just making up an alternative.

My personal thought is that a personal, useful private message is more encouraging than spanking them in a game they likely won't fully understand. Losing without understanding how is a lot more frustrating than losing and at least knowing why.

Extreme Ways wrote:I actually applaud ljex's behaviour in this one, trying to connect with NR's. You can check his claims by comparing the start time of the game to the last seen date on a NR's profile. If he actually would be farming for the sake of farming, he would be much smarter about it. In its current state he's just trying to get NRs a good experience on a standard map with a by-effect of farming them.

I'm also curious why one would be interested to play a doubles with someone when you're about to report your teammate Game 19822664

Our chat from that game (which started before this whole abuse thread) - I literally told him what I was doing in the chat which is what prompted him to look.

I must say, thank you for believe me it is refreshing for someone to look and see the intent behind the actions

2020-04-06 18:15:06 - iAmCaffeine [team]: this is the issue with starting simple games at the moment lol
2020-04-06 18:15:08 - iAmCaffeine [team]: lots of people abusing it
2020-04-06 18:15:18 - iAmCaffeine [team]: also interesting you put your name down for gnomeland security
2020-04-06 18:15:48 - iAmCaffeine [team]: snapshot round 1
2020-04-06 18:15:57 - iAmCaffeine [team]: we can comm if you want but honestly this game is gonna be a large load of whatever
2020-04-06 18:56:55 - ljex [team]: haha they asked me if i was interested and i said i would check it out for a bit as not sure how long i am staying
2020-04-06 18:57:02 - ljex [team]: are you in for gnomeland as well?
2020-04-06 18:57:36 - ljex [team]: also its somewhat hard, i myself have been trying to join as many NR games as i can not for the points but to get people interested in the games
2020-04-06 18:58:12 - ljex [team]: people could look and see a bunch of NR games but they wont see all the players who i have gotten to play doubles games that we then promptly lose because they arent very good
2020-04-06 18:58:28 - ljex [team]: im sure eventually i will be accused but whatever
2020-04-06 18:59:46 - ljex [team]: snapshot round 1
2020-04-06 19:00:03 - ljex [team]: yellow in aussie and blue in south affrica is what we have to worry about

iAmCaffeine wrote:

ljex wrote:So what exactly is the suggestion? PM them what?

If I set off on a campaign to try and improve the retention of new recruits, I would send a PM welcoming them to the website, briefly mention the SoC, give some general advice about maps and settings, then perhaps offer to play a 2v2 doubles game with them. I would not join a large number of games knowing that 90% of them would result in deadbeats and I could be seen to be farming.

ljex wrote:Have you done this to actually know that it is successful or are you just talking out of your ass because you think it may work?

I haven't done this exact thing but I've done similar in the past, yes. I have mentored many lower ranked and/or new players over the years, to varying degrees.

ljex wrote:My personal thoughts would be that a PM does very little to encourage them to stay so I didn't do that. Could I be wrong, sure but if someone had posted somewhere that it worked I probably would have taken that up instead. As is I haven't seen any evidence to say this approach is successful so I will assume you are just making up an alternative.

My personal thought is that a personal, useful private message is more encouraging than spanking them in a game they likely won't fully understand. Losing without understanding how is a lot more frustrating than losing and at least knowing why.

Honestly that puts a lot of onus on the NR to actually do research into the SOC and I doubt it has significant increases on retention rates but again show me the evidence if it is there. From everything you say it sounds like it is just a hunch and that we had different ideas for how to solve the same problem. The difference being that I did invest my time and you didn't. It could be that both of our ideas help or neither does but in my small sample size I did have a better retention rate than CC overall though admittedly still very low.

To the second point I too have mentored a lot of newer players many years ago...some of whom are still here which is great to see after being gone for half a decade. I would argue that I have trained more people how to play speed freestyle than most others and people still looked at me as a legal farmer back in the day.

To the last point, neither of us can solve that and it is something that CC should fix so not sure how it is relevant.

When I first start I would get beat by higher rank guys. Guess what kept me motivated to keep trying to better myself. LOSSING. I would tell myself I'm as good as this guy and I'll prove it. I kept working til I got my hat. I think anyone who comes to the site understands the basic map. It's not like Ljex is inviting them to a map that they would not understand. Everyone understands the classic map. Lately thank you Ljexs for trying to reach out to the NRs. Giving the something to strive for.

Extreme Ways wrote:I'm also curious why one would be interested to play a doubles with someone when you're about to report your teammate Game 19822664

That game started before I saw any of this.

I also hadn't seen any of his messages in this game until after I filed this report, and he told me via PM that he'd just told me about it in the game.

Extreme Ways wrote:In its current state he's just trying to get NRs a good experience on a standard map with a by-effect of farming them.

That makes it ok then!

happyfeet wrote:When I first start I would get beat by higher rank guys. Guess what kept me motivated to keep trying to better myself. LOSSING. I would tell myself I'm as good as this guy and I'll prove it. I kept working til I got my hat. I think anyone who comes to the site understands the basic map. It's not like Ljex is inviting them to a map that they would not understand. Everyone understands the classic map. Lately thank you Ljexs for trying to reach out to the NRs. Giving the something to strive for.

I'm not familiar with "lossing" and I wouldn't consider you, or anyone, a good player for just having a hat.

ljex wrote:Honestly that puts a lot of onus on the NR to actually do research into the SOC and I doubt it has significant increases on retention rates but again show me the evidence if it is there. From everything you say it sounds like it is just a hunch and that we had different ideas for how to solve the same problem. The difference being that I did invest my time and you didn't. It could be that both of our ideas help or neither does but in my small sample size I did have a better retention rate than CC overall though admittedly still very low.

You keep asking for data to backup my argument while you have none for yours. My solution doesn't involve taking points from clueless players. Yours does.

We can argue all day long or we can sit and wait for this to be ruled on. Not complicated.

Edit: the other thing that concerns me here, is if we decide this is all fine, what kind of precedent does it set? Next thing you'll have JR24 joining every single NR game he sees and saying "if you have any questions let me know" but that's deemed to be ok because he copy/pasted a single message in every game. Where do you draw the line and how do you make it black/white so it's not abused?

iAmCaffeine wrote:

Extreme Ways wrote:I'm also curious why one would be interested to play a doubles with someone when you're about to report your teammate Game 19822664

That game started before I saw any of this.

I also hadn't seen any of his messages in this game until after I filed this report, and he told me via PM that he'd just told me about it in the game.

Extreme Ways wrote:In its current state he's just trying to get NRs a good experience on a standard map with a by-effect of farming them.

That makes it ok then!

happyfeet wrote:When I first start I would get beat by higher rank guys. Guess what kept me motivated to keep trying to better myself. LOSSING. I would tell myself I'm as good as this guy and I'll prove it. I kept working til I got my hat. I think anyone who comes to the site understands the basic map. It's not like Ljex is inviting them to a map that they would not understand. Everyone understands the classic map. Lately thank you Ljexs for trying to reach out to the NRs. Giving the something to strive for.

I'm not familiar with "lossing" and I wouldn't consider you, or anyone, a good player for just having a hat.

ljex wrote:Honestly that puts a lot of onus on the NR to actually do research into the SOC and I doubt it has significant increases on retention rates but again show me the evidence if it is there. From everything you say it sounds like it is just a hunch and that we had different ideas for how to solve the same problem. The difference being that I did invest my time and you didn't. It could be that both of our ideas help or neither does but in my small sample size I did have a better retention rate than CC overall though admittedly still very low.

You keep asking for data to backup my argument while you have none for yours. My solution doesn't involve taking points from clueless players. Yours does.

We can argue all day long or we can sit and wait for this to be ruled on. Not complicated.

Edit: the other thing that concerns me here, is if we decide this is all fine, what kind of precedent does it set? Next thing you'll have JR24 joining every single NR game he sees and saying "if you have any questions let me know" but that's deemed to be ok because he copy/pasted a single message in every game. Where do you draw the line and how do you make it black/white so it's not abused?

I mean I posted it in the chat before this report was filled so not sure if you saw it but assumed that is what prompted you to look at my games. If not then you clearly have too much time on your hands and an agenda.

I do have data to support my claim, I played all the games fast as long as the NR's did and was successfully able to get a higher conversion rate than CC's normal %. Would I prefer there were better solutions...yes which is why I sent an email to the site owner in my second day back with my suggestions but was told they had already tried speed games so I figured I would try something else.

I have said multiple times that I am willing to accept whatever judgement comes from this but that doesn't mean I don't have the right to to defend myself if you are going to continue to accuse me. You and I both have the ability to not reply but if you are going to continue to accuse me I am going to continue to defend myself.

To your edit, that is a fair argument and the most sound one you have made so far in this thread. I think the line is are you abusing it for points which I am clearly not. Had I played 50 games over the last 2 weeks all of which were me joining NR games then I would agree but as it stands this is 5-10% of my game total which will have very little affect on my score. I think the line of abuse is when this is a much larger % of overall games to the point where it can materially affect ones score but that is just me.

Last point is that its pretty classless to throw another player into this accusation in JR24 for your hypothetical scenario of abuse when you could have easily made it non player specific as a scenario.

So...by what you just said. You wouldnt consider me or anyone a better player for just having a hat. What are you trying to prove with this thread? That we are all equal players. You are now saying what ljexs is doing is fine. (Which it is) You need to make up your mind you cant ride both sides.

This seems indeed against the rules but there is a problem that should be addressed first. The site is completely unable to handle the outburst of new recruits due to Covid-19. I signed up for guiding games and a crazy bombardment started with them. I stopped accepting speed games the second day but still after 5-6 days I had about 30 active guide games (autoaccepted) and my pm constantly spammed so much that I just stopped opening them.

So I would say, due to the sercumstances, any help to keep the NR around should be encouraged. It is also sad that the site has done almost nothing and it is completely unprepaired to handle this wave.

happyfeet wrote:So...by what you just said. You wouldnt consider me or anyone a better player for just having a hat. What are you trying to prove with this thread? That we are all equal players. You are now saying what ljexs is doing is fine. (Which it is) You need to make up your mind you cant ride both sides.

I don't know how to talk to you without insulting your intelligence so I'm just going to inform you that I will no longer answer your comments from now on because I feel like I'd have to headbutt a bus to equal your mental capacity. Hope that makes sense.

ljex wrote:I mean I posted it in the chat before this report was filled so not sure if you saw it but assumed that is what prompted you to look at my games. If not then you clearly have too much time on your hands and an agenda.

I have no reason to check the chat in that game unless you ask me to do so, and you didn't.

ljex wrote:To your edit, that is a fair argument and the most sound one you have made so far in this thread. I think the line is are you abusing it for points which I am clearly not. Had I played 50 games over the last 2 weeks all of which were me joining NR games then I would agree but as it stands this is 5-10% of my game total which will have very little affect on my score. I think the line of abuse is when this is a much larger % of overall games to the point where it can materially affect ones score but that is just me.

If it's decided that what you're doing is fine but a rule is set in place to determine when it's abuse and when it's not, I'm okay with that.

ljex wrote:Last point is that its pretty classless to throw another player into this accusation in JR24 for your hypothetical scenario of abuse when you could have easily made it non player specific as a scenario.

It's relevant actually: viewtopic.php?f=239&t=232764

mc05025 wrote:This seems indeed against the rules but there is a problem that should be addressed first. The site is completely unable to handle the outburst of new recruits due to Covid-19. I signed up for guiding games and a crazy bombardment started with them. I stopped accepting speed games the second day but still after 5-6 days I had about 30 active guide games (autoaccepted) and my pm constantly spammed so much that I just stopped opening them.

So I would say, due to the sercumstances, any help to keep the NR around should be encouraged. It is also sad that the site has done almost nothing and it is completely unprepaired to handle this wave.

I will say in the defense of the site, it is hard to prepare for something like this.

To be honest I didn't even know you could sign up for guide games and if I did I would have done that instead. Can you direct me to where to sign up for this?

write here

viewtopic.php?f=341&t=203384&start=325

iAmCaffeine wrote:

happyfeet wrote:So...by what you just said. You wouldnt consider me or anyone a better player for just having a hat. What are you trying to prove with this thread? That we are all equal players. You are now saying what ljexs is doing is fine. (Which it is) You need to make up your mind you cant ride both sides.

I don't know how to talk to you without insulting your intelligence so I'm just going to inform you that I will no longer answer your comments from now on because I feel like I'd have to headbutt a bus to equal your mental capacity. Hope that makes sense.

ljex wrote:I mean I posted it in the chat before this report was filled so not sure if you saw it but assumed that is what prompted you to look at my games. If not then you clearly have too much time on your hands and an agenda.

I have no reason to check the chat in that game unless you ask me to do so, and you didn't.

ljex wrote:To your edit, that is a fair argument and the most sound one you have made so far in this thread. I think the line is are you abusing it for points which I am clearly not. Had I played 50 games over the last 2 weeks all of which were me joining NR games then I would agree but as it stands this is 5-10% of my game total which will have very little affect on my score. I think the line of abuse is when this is a much larger % of overall games to the point where it can materially affect ones score but that is just me.

If it's decided that what you're doing is fine but a rule is set in place to determine when it's abuse and when it's not, I'm okay with that.

ljex wrote:Last point is that its pretty classless to throw another player into this accusation in JR24 for your hypothetical scenario of abuse when you could have easily made it non player specific as a scenario.

It's relevant actually: viewtopic.php?f=239&t=232764

Its fair to believe that you didn't check the chat, I had assumed you had but willing to believe you didn't.

As for the rule, I would fully accept a rule but would encourage site admin to make it somewhat non specific. The point here being that if someone plays 50% against NR's and 50% doodle and lux 1vs1's that is basically impossible to point farm where as if you are playing 20% NR's and 80% 12 man escalating games (%'s of active) that take forever to finish then you can easily farm because you can finish a lot of farming games in the time it takes to finish 1 of your 12 man games. The problem with a specific rule is that they cant use their better judgement in the future which is why I would encourage something that is more of a guideline so they can maintain flexibility on a case by case basis.

Again if they want determine that this is against the rules then I am fine with that outcome as well but think if that is the case they need to change the way NR's are brought into the ecosystem of the site. Its a pretty poor experience as it stands currently and if you put limits on people joining NR games then they don't fill which just makes people leave because they can't get their game started fast.

Some possibilities each of which I would support are not getting points for a NR who deadbeats and only getting points if they complete the game or forcing all NR's to go through the guide game process but as it stands the site is quite frankly offering a terrible experience or new users and I am getting accused of cheating for trying to make it better.

mc05025 wrote:write here

viewtopic.php?f=341&t=203384&start=325

Thank you, I have volunteered myself

There are a f*ck tonne of relatively straightforward things that can be done to improve new players' experience, but getting them done is extremely unlikely.