The cheating could have been done a little at a time so that it's not going to cause a huge issue, especially with the lack of involvement from the community. But what we have in World 85 is beyond ridiculous, and reason for the developers to consider private worlds/commissioners like in other games so that these can be dealt with. We have a person (harryhoudini / pancho_villa) in two countries swapping cash and players back and forth in the most obvious ways that it destroys the fun in this game. I would be fine with it if this league was in agreement with having reserve teams, etc, but we do not. Since there is no commissioner, can Norbert or some one deal with this most obvious problem? Or do we care so little that this is going to be ignored, resulting in more players (that won't cheat) dropping out due to the uneven playing field?

I appreciate that with the limited resources devoted to this game that scanning for cheating or unethical behaviour won't be a priority for Norbert, however this is too blatant to be ignored, in my opinion.

There was similar issues around all worlds, but the official answer is that admins doesn't give a ... about it. They put the min/max bid policy and they tough that the issue will be gone after a few seasons, unfortunately still exist, and probably is ruining not one of the worlds.

putting a max bid doesn't stop it, it just makes it harder to do.

I thought there was talk a while back about putting a limit on the number of transfers allowed between two teams per season. This Houdini/Villa guy keeps sending the same players back and forth with a min bid going one direction and a max bid going the other direction. Limiting the transfers between the teams would at least slow this kind of behavior down.

Admin is going to put no time into it, so it's up to you to police yourselves.  What can you do in the way of vigilante justice?  All his good players must be really cheap.  Everyone spam his inbox, everyone put in minimum transfers for his players.  Maybe eventually he slips up and hits the accept button by accident.  They're at least annoying.

hahaha, the good Dean's tactic to annoy someone.

Remember, Norbert has specifically told us that if there isn't a rule against something, it isn't cheating.  I cannot make this stuff up.

unclevic, why exactly do you bother with anything? You don't have an active team...in anything. Do you just have nothing better to do?

Sorry, but Unclevic is right. I sent a ticket into norbert and his exact response was the collusion was not considered cheating in this game. There is nothing that WIS is going to do about it.
I do not believe that is Norbert's stance. I believe his hands are tied and that there is not enough money at WIS to do anything about it. I also think that makes all games at WIS on life support. They have money for the big games but they already got rid of racing dynasty and I bet others are yet to come.
I think this game will be here a while, seeing as it is free and they have not done an update of any kind in over a year, it probably costs very little to maintain.

cjsweat - your point is well taken, but do any of us posting on the forum board of a free fantasy soccer game have any right to call someone else a loser?

and i'll save you the trouble, I don't have an active team either, at least not under this id.  I am on the waiting list though.

Well, I'm not saying that I'm not a loser. I definitely am...haha. However, I think it takes a level of loserdom to post on a forum for a free fantasy soccer league in which you don't have a team.  Your case is a bit different since you're waiting. haha

I think it takes a greater level of loserdom to continue playing a game where you KNOW you're being cheated and the proprietor doesn't care, than to drop such a game as I did.  (No offense to the handful of guys who play the game so well thet even the cheaters can't beat them -- systemhalter, damag, probably one or two others).

haha, you got it man. just so you know, i was totally just picking with you. i actually agree with the point you're making about the cheating, it has to stop. a couple of weeks ago, i made a thread about how they should charge for this game. people love a great soccer game because soccer is so huge around the globe. it could take WIS's national market and globalize it...but no one really likes the game.  i would totally pay for a great soccer game. paying for it would eliminate most of the unofficial cheaters in the game.  i mean how many people would actually pay more just to be good at some fantasy soccer game? so, yeah. that's my take on it.

I'm not good, I'm lucky.  I play in a world where it's too damn hard to cheat.  There are actually too many real teams compared to other worlds (although that number is dropping little by little), competition for players is nuts.  I recently helped a buddy with his startup team, and discovered that free agent player values in his world are about half of what they are in ours... yet we work with the same base salary structure, and the same level of talent is distributed.  End result, in his world there is more hoarding of talent.  In our world teams have overall lower base levels of talent... which is why few of our teams ever do well in exhibition tournaments.

I have said it before and here it is again... the one great flaw in how this game rolled out is that the worlds were not built organically.  When over half of the initial users chose to build a USA team, it created too many worlds with empty countries.  Ghost countries created ghost worlds.  The ability to use an alt ID is not a problem in itself, but when combined with the strategy of placing that alt ID to best advantage, here we are.

 

This is happening in World 59 right now between Lions in England's league, and a new team in Italy's league.  The Italian team has bought 5 mediocre players from Lions at max transfer.