Great thinking. I'll add this behavior soon.
]]>Hmm... but then cooperating players would just wait 5 minutes (or whatever) before transferring the money. Yes, the longer you make it, the more it slows them down. But also, the more in shrinks the house pool!
I think 5 minutes is long enough to make the process uneconomical (30 minutes for 20 ladders..zzz), while getting the house into play fairly quickly. In fact, if the 5 minutes was based on the time elapsed since the 'Fresh start' button was clicked it would only remove houses from play that had sub 5 minute build times — likely empty houses anyway.
Of course, everyone likes a free $2k so maybe it would be an unpopular solution anyhow.
]]>Anyway, what I'm still looking for is proof that this has actually happened in the wild. The last time this came up, I investigated and found that no dual-accounts were involved! There was a different explanation.
I'm not sure which event you're referring to, but did you ever figure out what happened here: http://thecastledoctrine.net/forums/vie … 3206#p3206
Call it lack of imagination, but I'm not seeing how it would have happened without an exploit (the only way would be 5+ huge hits from scratch in the course of at most a few hours).
]]>That incident ended up being rather amusing, but it highlighted the fact that two (or more) players can easily cooperate to quickly take out a top house. I imagine that a larger, more active player base would only make this more apparent.
As suggested elsewhere, a short delay (1-5 minutes) on the listing of a fresh house would go some way to mitigating cooperative pumping.
In this context a fresh house could be defined as any house submitted within 5 minutes of the player starting a new life.
]]>Oh, so you did this yourself.... but not with a second account?
Did you have Ludi actively cooperate with you?
It was a few versions ago.. Ludicrosity was down on his luck and decided to just pop out $2000 houses. I happened to be online at the time with a safe-ish house, so I continued to nab the cash, driving up to about $30k or so pretty quickly. Which was when he wrote stuff like 'Rob Taber' or whatever it was. I ended up blasting through some top level houses and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
I can't quite find the forum post right now.
]]>Did you have Ludi actively cooperate with you?
]]>The fact this exploit exists at all means that soon enough, it will be exploited and spoil lots of hard work. It has already occurred quite a few times where many large houses were brute forced this way, myself being one of the perpetrators (thanks Ludi!).
]]>In fact, the anonymity in the game (not even knowing your own name) was designed as a way of partially thwarting it, so I've been worried about this issue for a long time.
I believe that this will become harder and harder to do as the player base increases (scrolling down a long account list, looking for the other "fake" house that you set up, before someone else gets to it).
My approach has been this: there is no way to prevent such behavior entirely (Turing). As long as we rule out quick, painless methods of doing this, we've pretty much solved the problem. Yes, a few will slip through, but it won't become the thing that everyone is doing, so it won't swamp the rest of the game.
If you're talking about someone actually *building* a fake house that only they know how to solve.... well... that will consume most of the money, and is also really slow. If they really want to do that, well.... I'm not too worried about it.
Anyway, what I'm still looking for is proof that this has actually happened in the wild. The last time this came up, I investigated and found that no dual-accounts were involved! There was a different explanation.
So...
Next time you see this happen on one of your tapes, EMAIL me immediately with the name of the robber. That way, I can check it out in the server logs and figure out what actually happened. I'll be able to figure out how that robber got enough money for 30 ladders or whatever. jasonrohrer@fastmail.fm
]]>I think as the player base grows the problem of pumping will become more and more contentious. Imagine a dozen people doing it all at once, sure they will be stealing each others cash, but someone will end up with a snowball of dollars. It could potentially make the game very unstable for all players and ruin the server.
Placing this simple delay could alleviate the whole issue, while also giving beginner houses a brief period of grace.
]]>Also, from the list I take it that my name should be Castro. Sweet.
]]>Your idea would solve the purposefully one time robbable houses, but maybe at the expense of other elements of the game.
]]>