Posted by Benis on 11/3/2022 9:41:00 AM (view original):

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

This is hilarious.

Posted by uglyskunk3 on 11/3/2022 1:05:00 PM (view original):
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.

I feel that's fair.

I was just reading the umpteenth thread about local trick-or-treating kids stealing entire bowls of candy off of porches, and it struck me that the HD cheating reminds me of that. If only we had the vigilance of Ring cameras for HD.

"But the bowl was left out on the porch" / "It was programmed that way"
"They had to know to only take 1 or 2 pieces" / "They were able to do it repeatedly so they thought it was alright"
"Oh I know him, he's a good kid, just playing a trick" / "[offender] is a great guy, no way he would knowingly do this repeatedly"

There were people who defended the candy stealers too.

3 years. 3 years this was going on. Phuck this game.

What are the effects of this "patch"? I think it would be fair to the rest of us that this be spelled out fully ahead of time.

Also, reading what happened, it seems like a fix might have been just to add a "inform of non-redshirt" option that you could do from the start. That should have some value, and in real life it would. Okay, recruit, I am not going to promise you pt, but you won't get redshirted and may get time off the bench, depending on how the season evolves. More people would have done this more often and noticed its effects earlier then. Also, I do think the prestige issue was on point. Come play with us, we have great prestige A+, and we aren't going to redshirt you, vs. a C team saying we aren't going to redshirt you, big deal, of course I should be playing with you. So maybe just do that WIS rather than tinkering with all the algorithms.

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/3/2022 4:34:00 AM (view original):

Posted by baseball4309 on 11/3/2022 3:45:00 AM (view original):
This has likely already been covered... but has anyone tested to see if the loophole was fixed?

At the expense of being permanently banned? I’d guess that no one will take that bait! Unless you were sarcastically joking about that

i seriously doubt this is sarcasm. its totally OK to look for exploits. for good purposes. i have sent in plenty more serious than this and obviously was not punished for doing so.

i absolutely intend to go try to exploit this after the fix. if i do find a problem, that will be quietly reported to CS and quietly fixed, just like it has always been.

edit: just to clarify, in case its not clear, i'd be doing this on a test team for crappy players or something along those lines. if its my real team, it would not be in the competitive space. this is how i have always approached these issues.

Just adding some humor my man

Posted by usvtheman on 11/2/2022 11:19:00 PM (view original):
Frankly I find it ridiculous so many experienced coaches are sticking their head in the sand pretending like this would not yield a huge advantage. After identifying talent, the entire challenge of recruiting is figuring out where to divvy up your attention, giving yourself the best shot possible at top targets while cultivating potential backups and unlocking schollies for them. It's a zero-sum game. It wasn't for these guys who could unlock schollies on their backups without having to make that calculation. Add in the factor of their prestige deterring others off those recruits, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how over 3 years of doing this cycle after cycle would compound into a massive boost for the program over others who weren't using it.

It's also patently obvious this is not how the game would intend to work, and it's completely insulting to act otherwise, regardless of how bad CS dropped the ball. Genuinely can't believe some of these posts defending the actions. I would probably stop short of a permaban, but not by much.

Quote post by shoe3 on 11/2/2022 11:56:00 PM: No, it's not "patently obvious". Nor is it "common sense", to use doggg's words.

Sorry, shoe, but I have to agree with top and usv. Anyone who can distinguish right from wrong will know what the cheaters did was cheating and was wrong. And your whataboutism, diverting the conversation to other topics (pulldowns, for example), doesn't change that. Top's post and usv's post were spot on, among the clearest in the entire several-day conversation.

The cheaters cheated and should be gone. Unfortunately for HD and its users, the cheaters are still here and are now emboldened to come on the forums minimizing what they did, even still arguing that they did nothing wrong. That's not exactly the accountability that CS partly relied on in their decision to let them off the hook, is it? But I guess that isn't surprising if you think "once a cheater, always a cheater."

I wonder how this forum would have went down if it was never labeled CHEATER CONFIRMED, before anyone knew which recruiting action they were using to “cheat”

Posted by zemedlin on 11/4/2022 3:14:00 PM (view original):
I wonder how this forum would have went down if it was never labeled CHEATER CONFIRMED, before anyone knew which recruiting action they were using to “cheat”

Tough to say. I was too busy lighting torches and handing out pitchforks to consider the implications

Swenske's autopilot team just upset the #1 seed to reach the E8. The best run at St John's in 12 seasons.

The HD gods are now just being silly.

Posted by Benis on 11/7/2022 8:39:00 AM (view original):
Swenske's autopilot team just upset the #1 seed to reach the E8. The best run at St John's in 12 seasons.

The HD gods are now just being silly.

The absolute worst. Not enough for him to win Conference Coach of the Year.

Posted by salag on 11/7/2022 9:40:00 AM (view original):

Posted by Benis on 11/7/2022 8:39:00 AM (view original):
Swenske's autopilot team just upset the #1 seed to reach the E8. The best run at St John's in 12 seasons.

The HD gods are now just being silly.

The absolute worst. Not enough for him to win Conference Coach of the Year.

If I had to face him in the tournament, I'd be all over customer service about it. The team should have been barred from the postseason.

Luckily, I avoided the whole situation by building a team that was not at the level to make it beyond the first round.

Posted by gillispie on 11/3/2022 4:17:00 PM (view original):

Posted by topdogggbm on 11/3/2022 4:34:00 AM (view original):

Posted by baseball4309 on 11/3/2022 3:45:00 AM (view original):
This has likely already been covered... but has anyone tested to see if the loophole was fixed?

At the expense of being permanently banned? I’d guess that no one will take that bait! Unless you were sarcastically joking about that

i seriously doubt this is sarcasm. its totally OK to look for exploits. for good purposes. i have sent in plenty more serious than this and obviously was not punished for doing so.

i absolutely intend to go try to exploit this after the fix. if i do find a problem, that will be quietly reported to CS and quietly fixed, just like it has always been.

edit: just to clarify, in case its not clear, i'd be doing this on a test team for crappy players or something along those lines. if its my real team, it would not be in the competitive space. this is how i have always approached these issues.

gil I'm surprised you've found so many 'exploits' - esp worse than this one. I no longer send any tickets in for any reasons, but even at my height, where I probably sent in a ticket a month, I don't recall finding many exploits like this one, lots of ?'s, do you want the engine to deliver this result or that result, things like that. I probably got a few things changed, but if anything, I found sending in tickets itself was probably an 'exploit', since often the answers gave insights that the average user was not privy to. I often would post those tickets if I thought they were relevant enough on the boards to share the info, but certainly not always. I'd say more based on how much time I had or a gut intuition, I probably withheld some info that would have helped others, probably also posted some info or interpretations that were far off. But this game is so dependant on recruiting, I find it hard to imagine you found several or even more than several exploits worse than the ability to get 80 free AP's?

If a user called oldave, who I think might still be active, but in the early tarek days was one of the best HC's in the game, he could tell this story much better than I. I'd ask you & others to freely critique me for my role in this (intentions are so hard to judge, but please have at me). I was at I think loyala chicago, d1, early tark days, b4 I went to cal and then uconn, where I built my best dynasty, so early engine days, I was one of the first (maybe the first) human player to make d1 in tark, but it was very hard to get a major, took 2 other short stints b4 uconn said yes.

anyhow, this is long, I'm going to continue on a 2nd post .....

the rage of the forums in that era was that -5 was an exploit, I think it was -5 man, but all -5 was considered I think the word 'gimmick' might have been used. Tarke ran a bunch of simulations to prove it wasn't, he posted them, same two teams vs each other, 500 games each running all 11 defenses, -5 thru +5. 0 was the best, -5 the worst, +5 the second worst, BUT all were pretty close, and some were out of order (+1, -1, 0 were very close to each other)

additionally, if teams doubled (DT'ing was an upgrade to the orig engine) the best perimeter players & played -5, it worked even better according to the forums.

at the time, all my west conn d3 title teams and all ten of my teams, ran FCP with 0, I almost never changed, and if I did, it was +1 or -1. anyhow, as result of all this posting, I decided I'd try the opposite of the defense everyone thought was so great. In addition, I think at the time, nobody had won a title using combo defenses, so I set out to show I could win titles without FCP'ing, so I switched all ten of my teams to +5, dt'ing the best two inside guys, running man - fcp combo. I ran it for about 2 seasons of ten teams, so 20 or so, not sure if there even where ten worlds back then, but I think there were.

I kept winning, didn't really think I had unconvered a glitch or anything, cause I also was winning without it.

but oldave didn't think my defense was fair. He later sitemailed me explaining that he'd worked with CS to change the engine when a team dt'd big men. It turned out CS/tarek found out that in the code, when one dt'd big men, it counted those big men as potential defensive reobunders, so instead of 2 or 3 guys I had 4 or 5. All ten of my teams led the nation in rebounding (I really didn't even know that, but oldave told me, tarek never contacted me), and the margin wasn't that close (say by 5 in most worlds, even though back in that day, I almost always started 3 guards). so I got the benefit of +5 (I think I ended up +2, back then I used to experiment all season long with most of my teams) to stop 3's, I got the turnover benefit of some pressing, and I almost never gave up an offensive reboound, plus I dt'd both of the other team's star big men.

You can judge me or my intentions, feel free to. but I must admit, I never gave my strategy a 2nd thought at the time as either being a glitch or unfair, until oldave sitemailed me and told me what took place and why. I don't think anyone but oldave and I (and tarek) knew anything about this, but oldave is the guy who could really tell the story.