Posted by usvtheman on 11/3/2022 12:23:00 AM (view original):
Pulldowns are a gray area. You could easily feasibly think that recruits who weren't getting attention from D1 schools would settle for a D2 school making a hard push.

This was not. Nobody would feasibly think it should be a net advantage to tell a kid you would redshirt him and then go back on it, nor that it would make any sense whatsoever for recruiting to work in that manner when every other coach is having to expend AP points to unlock schollies. You would only do this if you believed it was an exploit. You are reverse engineering a far-fetched justification that I'm positive none of these people actually believed. Sorry. I don't see it at all.

Not everyone thinks that though. Lots of folks think that kids who consider themselves to be D1 players should always just choose juco instead of settling for lower division effort. Since the game allows it (in this version and the previous version) veterans all know about it and it seems natural to us - but when it was first discovered, that wasn't true at all. Because the game design isn't clear that it's possible, or how, users originally stumbling on it presumably had to guess about it, and then determine for themselves whether or not it was an intended feature.

The only thing making the redshirt thing weird *at all* is having to inform of a redshirt first. But again, that wouldn't be the only intentional feature that was awkward and forced in this game. And of course the individual user doesn't know anything about what other users are having to do. They only necessarily know that it's a benefit for them, over what they were doing before. Nobody is obligated to care about what other users do, about what "standard practice" is.

Call it reverse engineering if you want, but the point is that it should never be on the user to determine developers intent. NEVER. That is incredibly poor game design and customer service practice. There are lots of "out of the box" thinkers out there, non-conformists who will never fit into a "nobody would feasibly think" kind of narrative. We don't need mobs with pitchforks coming after them every time they figure out something the rest of the community is sleeping on - not until they use it in a collusive manner. Developers can and should explicitly clarify when something is being done going against intent (and issue warnings when appropriate), but again the first priority should be to provide the product that has a clear and transparent gameplay, relatively free of exploitable bugs.

Posted by RiddleFace on 11/1/2022 7:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by uglyskunk3 on 11/1/2022 6:59:00 PM (view original):

Posted by RiddleFace on 11/1/2022 6:40:00 PM (view original):
From jc14's post: "The major downside is that sometimes, if the recruit was at a level of quality that would never accept a redshirt from your team, he would get very mad at the "inform of redshirt" and no amount of recruiting effort (including "inform of no redshirt") would make him consider you at all. Everything would be 0% even with like a thousand APs or whatever.. Nothing. So, this "trick" or "hack" as you guys call it, or "viable recruiting gamble" as these guys thought of it, was just that - a gamble. It was of absolutely no use in D2."

Clearly the rewards outweighed the risks.

Let's go over how it probably went down. Knowing of this loophole, I with confidence could offer every 5-star D1 talent I like 0 or 1 AP and inform of the redshirt in the first cycle. I can then spread the rest of my AP on all the 4 or 3 star players I like and inform them of a redshirt knowing they are less likely to react adversely to it. By the second cycle, I know every 5 star player that did not react harshly to the redshirt and I can exploit with the loophole bonus when I remove the redshirt, and since I've got experience using this exploit I would know what the minimum AP needed to unlock them would be. So I move the AP I used in the first cycle on the 4 and 3 star targets to the 5 stars. Then I get the unredshirt bonus too with the 4 and 3 star players, and once again with experience, know the minimum AP to use on them to unlock them as well. And that, as I see it, is how Swenske unlocked TWO DOZEN players by the third cycle. Yeah, that's massively unfair.

We also need to remember that Swenske and the rest of the cheaters/loopholers knew who each other were, so they probably avoided each other as much as possible. That is another unfair advantage that we haven't brought up, or at least I haven't seen discussed much here.

Ok yeah when you lay it out like that it does feel pretty exploit-y haha.

WIS did an interview with Robinhood where he discusses how his cousin got him to join and how he and his brother started up by picking teams in Maine to play against each other. Its not a secret a group of family or friends got together to play an online game. Are we really calling this collusion now?

https://web.archive.org/web/20111017045059/http://whatifsports.com/beyondtheboxscore/default.asp?article=interview_20090801

I just wrapped up my class in D2 Rupp and will give a crack at trying it out. I have nothing else to do in HD for a couple days now anyway ;-)

Had some time to think about this… here’s my take on the punishment.

I’m usually a torches and pitchforks type of guy when it comes to these situations, but I personally am not in favor of a lifetime ban of HD.

This is largely because I’m curious how good they are without the advantage. I would, as has been suggested, reset their resumes so they start in D3.

That’s just me. I shared a conference AND state with Robinhood in Naismith and consistently backed off guys because I assumed he was heavily invested in them due to the early offers (I also lost many a close roll as well)… so I ain’t losing sleep over a ban either.

We need to remember that the list of users and the numbers of times they used it is only from the last 10 months, and they have been doing this for 3 years or so.
In Allen, I remember seeing robinhood's name all over low level D1/high level D2 guys for a long while.

Posted by hypnotoad on 11/3/2022 8:58:00 AM (view original):
We need to remember that the list of users and the numbers of times they used it is only from the last 10 months, and they have been doing this for 3 years or so.
In Allen, I remember seeing robinhood's name all over low level D1/high level D2 guys for a long while.

Yeah...if WIS had the ability to capture data over the last three years, those numbers might look really ugly...and there might be additional names from people who used the technique and then decided to stop for whatever reason. Pure speculation, of course...

Right, imagine if swenske's 2022 was actually less than his 2021.

Haven't posted on these forums in quite some time, but I've gotta say, going through this thread has been quite an entertaining read.

Posted by hypnotoad on 11/3/2022 9:21:00 AM (view original):
Right, imagine if swenske's 2022 was actually less than his 2021.

Fortunately I was able to take down Swenske's autopilot team in the CT semis. Sir Benis came off the bench and contributed a modest 5 points.

However, it appears that swenske gets the last laugh as he was also named Conference Coach of the Year

Posted by shoe3 on 11/3/2022 7:49:00 AM (view original):

Posted by usvtheman on 11/3/2022 12:23:00 AM (view original):
Pulldowns are a gray area. You could easily feasibly think that recruits who weren't getting attention from D1 schools would settle for a D2 school making a hard push.

This was not. Nobody would feasibly think it should be a net advantage to tell a kid you would redshirt him and then go back on it, nor that it would make any sense whatsoever for recruiting to work in that manner when every other coach is having to expend AP points to unlock schollies. You would only do this if you believed it was an exploit. You are reverse engineering a far-fetched justification that I'm positive none of these people actually believed. Sorry. I don't see it at all.

Not everyone thinks that though. Lots of folks think that kids who consider themselves to be D1 players should always just choose juco instead of settling for lower division effort. Since the game allows it (in this version and the previous version) veterans all know about it and it seems natural to us - but when it was first discovered, that wasn't true at all. Because the game design isn't clear that it's possible, or how, users originally stumbling on it presumably had to guess about it, and then determine for themselves whether or not it was an intended feature.

The only thing making the redshirt thing weird *at all* is having to inform of a redshirt first. But again, that wouldn't be the only intentional feature that was awkward and forced in this game. And of course the individual user doesn't know anything about what other users are having to do. They only necessarily know that it's a benefit for them, over what they were doing before. Nobody is obligated to care about what other users do, about what "standard practice" is.

Call it reverse engineering if you want, but the point is that it should never be on the user to determine developers intent. NEVER. That is incredibly poor game design and customer service practice. There are lots of "out of the box" thinkers out there, non-conformists who will never fit into a "nobody would feasibly think" kind of narrative. We don't need mobs with pitchforks coming after them every time they figure out something the rest of the community is sleeping on - not until they use it in a collusive manner. Developers can and should explicitly clarify when something is being done going against intent (and issue warnings when appropriate), but again the first priority should be to provide the product that has a clear and transparent gameplay, relatively free of exploitable bugs.

For some reason, I’m shocked I agree with shoe

25 guys on the Smith draft board from Temple, St Joes, Dayton, and Mich St. That’s A TON of talent.

Posted by shoe3 on 10/28/2022 5:55:00 PM (view original):
It’s annoying, but it’s on the developers to deal with loopholes - preferably before they’re exploited. Users shouldn’t be banned for looking for advantages, unless they are violating clearly stated rules (like those regarding collusion). The most I would support is removal of any ill-gotten resources, and maybe a warning to knock it off if they plan to explicitly outline that kind of behavior (whatever it was) as “cheating”.

BS! Have a little integrity. I have spent so many seasons at a low D1 school trying to recruit that this whole ordeal really ****** me off.

Thanks, Benis! No doubt this has had untold ripples throughout Smith for many seasons.

Can we hit these sim coached teams with a postseason ban somehow before they knock my bubble team out of the NT?!

An update on the punishments: " After reviewing all aspects of the situation and having candid conversations with robinhood410, cimmy4226, bdashkiwky, and doogan, we (site staff) have agreed on a final solution. We are reinstating the aforementioned accounts *but all of the accounts have been reset and all previous HD accolades removed. The users are starting from scratch."

More here.