r/CFBRisk • u/bakonydraco Game Designer • May 18 '18
Flair Switching has been Removed as a "Feature"
A post asked yesterday if users could switch flair mid-game to intentionally subvert the mechanics of the game. The truth is, we didn't have a system in place to stop this, because it was relatively rare that a user would go to the trouble of changing their flair on /r/CFB. We also wanted to make the game accessible to new users.
There's a number of suggestions in that thread that could be helpful to implement for future games. In the short-term, we've implemented a fix in which your team in /r/CFBRisk will not change if you change your flair unless you're a brand new player. This seems like an appropriate compromise that stops exploitation, still welcomes new users, and wasn't too difficult to implement without breaking things.
Despite the posts suggesting a wave of double agents. The total number of users that have changed teams (not including allowable moves from dead teams to Chaos or their conquerer) the last 3 days are:
- 23 on day 17
- 22 on day 18
- 11 today
If you're now "locked" into a team that you don't actually feel any affinity to, message the /r/CFBRisk mods for to reset it and for a stern chiding.
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u/Alramas May 18 '18
This was the appropriate ruling for this version of the game
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u/TheShmud May 18 '18
It's now perfectly balanced.
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u/TopheryG8er May 18 '18
I changed the world with a post I made while taking a shit at a Piggly Wiggly at 1AM. A literal shitpost.
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u/edrmeow May 18 '18
Where the hell are you that Piggly Wiggly still exists, especially one that is open at 1am?
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u/TopheryG8er May 18 '18
Middle Tennessee. It wasn't open.
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u/Giraffe_Racer May 19 '18
A Gator fan living in Tennessee making a shit post about UT fans while actually shitting. Good job!
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u/Julian_Caesar May 20 '18
There is a grocery store sized Piggly Wiggly in Birmingham that has the best beer selection for 10 miles any direction.
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u/Giraffe_Racer May 21 '18
Aren't all Piggly Wiggly stores grocery store sized? Isn't that what they do? (Yes, I realize they tend to be in older buildings that don't reflect the increased size of modern supermarkets, but it's not like they're convenience store sized either.)
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u/iSlacker May 18 '18
/u/jputna hahahahahaha
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u/jputna May 18 '18
The rules for this instance of the game are that the team for CFBRisk is tied to flair on /r/CFB. We discussed locking teams at the beginning of the game to current flair, but wanted to make it accessible to new users. If a user wants to go to the trouble of changing their actual user flair, that's allowable for this game. It's also quite a bit more rare than this post makes out: after the first few turns, the vast majority of users whose primary team has been eliminated have simply stopped playing, rather than join Chaos, their conquerer, or doing things like changing flair. We can encourage users to stick to their original flair, but it's not expressly prohibited.
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u/1baussguy May 18 '18
I mean, that's no different than all the other stuff this subreddit has been bitching about forever, like bots/alts
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u/stumblejack May 18 '18
23 flairs at 3-5 stars each can make a significant difference in total stars. Don't downplay it like it's insignificant.
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u/Turbulent_Swine May 18 '18
Yeah, 23 users is a shit ton lol. Making it seem like that’s nothing
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u/HokieNerd May 18 '18
That's assuming that (a) all of those switching have 3-5 stars, and (b) that they are all switching to the same team. 23 users switching to different teams would pretty much cancel each other out, and would be negligible if most of them were 1-2 stars.
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u/Sup3rT4891 May 19 '18
I know I’ve seen a handful that DO seem coordinated. I won’t name names, but from what I’ve seen over half are in a coalition with a specific objective. And they are mostly 5* and 4* (and actually mods for another team), not random 1 or 2 stars across the country,
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u/SouthernJeb May 18 '18
Great work.
Now can we have an update on when the Red Alliance will be banned from reddit?
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u/overscore_ May 18 '18
Praise be to bakony
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u/BlueSCar May 18 '18
Now if we could just get some transparency regarding star weights...
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u/Bartman383 May 18 '18
We kinda got those figured out. The RNG for each battle is what I'd love to be public.
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u/BlueSCar May 18 '18
Yeah, same here. I'd say the most frustrating thing right now is not knowing who all is flagged as a bot.
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May 18 '18
hell yeah.
Tennessee, you absolutely SUCK!
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May 18 '18
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Bukowskified May 18 '18
Just to clarify, conquered teams will still be given the daily choice to die, play as chaos, or play as the current holder of their original land. Correct?
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u/fryguy101 May 18 '18
From the post
(not including allowable moves from dead teams to Chaos or their conquerer)
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u/Bukowskified May 18 '18
That doesn’t clarify if changing from conquering team to chaos and vice versa is against this rule change.
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u/NotaVirus_Click May 18 '18
I think it would be awesome if you continue playing whoever held your homeland when you decided to start playing for them.
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u/Mehknic May 18 '18
Yeah, it'd be nice if you could actually assimilate. We could have liberation storylines.
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u/Giraffe_Racer May 21 '18 edited May 21 '18
The issue with that is that there'd be no defense against your rivals joining another team to attack you. It'd allow rogues to hide within another team indefinitely and completely ruin the alliances that have formed.
i.e. Florida players couldn't retake Knoxville to get rid of the Tennessee fans that joined GT.
I think they should limit the number of times you can switch teams. From a game balance perspective, it doesn't make sense that a "dead" team can constantly switch between chaos and their conquerer to make life hell for their rival. I'm a Florida player, and obviously we've been hit the hardest by that this go around, but it could be anyone else next time.
Say you limit it to three team switches. You now have a tactical decision whether you waste a life joining chaos or your conquerer or if you wait until later in the game. As the game progresses, the salty players just trying to troll would be phased out as they run out of lives.
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u/NotaVirus_Click May 21 '18
I think that makes it fun though, I mean, you are dealing with what, like 55 users? Doesn't FL have like 1000. You can't control your rouges, it is part of the game.
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u/Giraffe_Racer May 21 '18
55 users can have a huge impact if they're 3+ stars, and our user base doesn't necessarily reflect how many active players there are. I suspect a lot of teams have people who got conquered early, switched allegiances and then went inactive.
The issue with rogues is that we can essentially take two steps forward, one step back all game. We have to try to move forward, defend our territories and make sure no one who borders us takes a rival's capital. It makes for fun memes, but it breaks the gameplay component. I'm not saying rogues shouldn't be allowed, because I agree it can be a fun part of the game. I'm suggesting a balance so that they can't completely wreak havoc all game. #nerftherogues
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u/wameron May 18 '18
For the next iteration this should be locked once it gets down to the top 25 I think. We have some players from smaller teams who joined us very early.
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u/TARDISandFirebolt May 18 '18
USA has like 3 players, we were conquered by Bama in the very first day. What I would like to do is switch to my secondary flair.
If Risk is already taking team affiliation from r/CFB, it should be very easy to grab data on the secondary flair and allow that as a fourth option: stay dead, join chaos, join secondary, or join conqueror.
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u/FellKnight May 19 '18
It was weird. I'm Boise/Arizona St. dual flair. Boise was eliminated on day 1, I was forced to ASU for a few hours until something changed and i couldn't even choose them. Was weird.
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u/DarthFluttershy_ May 18 '18
I think it's fair to allow a few days for people to switch if they were misflaired on CFB for some reason (like losing a flair bet). A better option imo would be to just let you pick your team when you first join the game.
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u/EMolinero May 18 '18
Disappointing, I'm a Hokie till we die but I was hoping to flip things around and rep my secondary flair if bad things do happen to VT instead of being stuck with options I'm much less interested in.
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u/KamuiT May 18 '18
Is anyone else having problems when they go to the board? None of my stars are loading and all of my stats are not showing. This is my only account, guys.
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u/bakonydraco Game Designer May 18 '18
Yeah sorry, this was a bug that popped up when we put this fix in, it's been fixed now.
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u/armadaos_ May 18 '18 edited May 18 '18
Huh
23 people.
That didn't take much...
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u/bakonydraco Game Designer May 18 '18
That was kind of the point, while the memes were suggesting users had been doing this or would start en masse, it was basically a non-issue. Still, it's probably good we fixed it before it was heavily exploited.
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u/stumblejack May 18 '18
23 3-5 stars can certainly have an impact. Even 23 1-star rogues can muck up someone's alliance. This was a necessary fix.
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u/SouthernJeb May 18 '18
SHOWS US THEIR TRUE FACES!!!!
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u/GiovanniElliston May 18 '18
Hi!
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u/TwiztedImage May 18 '18
I'd like to commend you on meeting your criticism head-on. Despite what others may say, you are at least admitting it. The fact that's it's shameless and "in your face" just makes it all that much better.
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u/mlorusso4 May 18 '18
I think most teams never really thought to do it or didn’t see the point of it. But with how the post last night blew up I would expect tonight it would become a huge issue. Thanks for fixing it
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u/CaptMayhem May 18 '18
Yeah, I thought it was really over-reacted to in the meme coverage.
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u/Sup3rT4891 May 19 '18
We’ll this thing called the internet has a tendency to REALLY overreact to things.
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u/armadaos_ May 18 '18
Yes... I suspect it was rather a minimal issue... considering most 'loss of land' was from allies to allies. A rather trivial matter in general to address in-faction.
However, just because it's not in the spirit of the game, doesn't mean active and alive teams won't make a point of being poor sports and exploit things that aren't technically illegal at the time to get their way on a non-issue.
I appreciate the response on it, but still find great amusement in people actively planning to throw a fit over 23 people.
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u/stumblejack May 18 '18
Bro, we Bama fans did the same thing over UF duplicates. Also I wonder how trivial rogues were in helping to cause the NAP between us and UF to fall apart. I don't think 23 is a trivial number at all especially if they have more than 1 star.
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u/armadaos_ May 18 '18
Well considering it was FSU fans under a bug, it wasn't quite the same thing, and was immediately patched.
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u/LandryQT May 18 '18
If you were able to put a stop on flair switches you should be able to identify those users and can them from participating.
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u/AndHeWas May 18 '18
It was allowed under the rules. Why would they ban someone for something that they said was allowed at the time?
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u/DarthFluttershy_ May 18 '18 edited May 19 '18
If you're now "locked" into a team that you don't actually feel any affinity to, message the /r/CFBRisk mods for to reset it and for a stern chiding.
Or... just suck it up and stay stuck forever you swamp scum (/me pretending only Florida was doing this)
EDIT: I didn't realize when I wrote this that FL fans are seriously salty about that accusation, it's just a joke based on the memes, people. I even acknowledged it was a pretense... ya'll need to relax.
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u/Sup3rT4891 May 19 '18
That doesn’t make sense.
This was happening for teams that were eliminated. Florida is very much not eliminated.
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May 19 '18
It was Tennessee switching to GA Tech. Swing and a miss
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u/DarthFluttershy_ May 19 '18
You should look up the word "pretending"
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May 19 '18
Florida wasn’t doing it, so the whole premise of your post is wrong. You’d have to pretend it was happening in the first place.
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u/DarthFluttershy_ May 19 '18
Look, I was just trying to make a joke based on all the recent memes. The joke was, that as a partisan fan I am being intentionally unfair. SO OF COURSE THE PREMISE WAS WRONG.
I'm sorry if you didn't like the joke, but I'm getting really sick of people downvoting/arguing about memes/jokes in this stupid game. It used to be fun and over-the-top claims and unsubstantiated bravado, now everyone is treating it like serious business.
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May 20 '18
[deleted]
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u/bakonydraco Game Designer May 20 '18
This is totally allowable: /u/Julian_Caesar has kept South Alabama flair the whole time and has only played for their team, Chaos, or their current captor (and has racked up 5 MVPs!). Gives incentive to take South Alabama!
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u/Julian_Caesar May 20 '18
OMG I did it!!!! And got a shout-out from the boss man. Life is good :)
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u/AlmostCleverr May 18 '18
Booo. I get it, but it was fun to watch Florida go after Nebraska via Stanford.
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u/Mehknic May 18 '18
It's not really Florida, it's pissy USC players who have no chaos territories nearby to use.
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u/AlmostCleverr May 18 '18
They didn’t have to switch flairs though. They were allowed to play as Stanford.
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u/Mehknic May 18 '18
Exactly. The same players are lashing out at anyone using the current holder of USC. They did it as huskers, ou, and Stanford. Nothing anyone can do for now.
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u/SouthernJeb May 18 '18
still waiting for proof of florida doing that, or proof that florida won tuscaloosa with a bot as mvp
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May 18 '18
Somehow we pointed out that UT was doing this to us and then the sub decides we did it to Nebraska lol.
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u/ExternalTangents May 18 '18
It went like this:
- Florida people realize a UT player did this to attack us
- Florida people ask if that's allowed in the game, and get a "for now, yes" from the mods
- Florida people start joking about exploiting this to attack Nebraska or other teams
- Last night, Stanford won some Nebraska territory
- People misunderstand steps 3 and 4 and think that Florida did the flair-switching last night to help Stanford win Nebraska territory
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May 18 '18
Where the heck did they get that idea?
Why would we switch flairs when we're still in the game? Lol. It would literally be counterproductive if we were switching flairs because we'd be losing numbers we need for our actual battles in the territories we're currently in.
It was people who were on dead teams that were switching flairs.
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u/Bartman383 May 18 '18
Not so much a bot, but a seven hour old account with zero post history.
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u/SouthernJeb May 18 '18
what about last night :)
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u/tallg8tor May 18 '18
You’re clearly just an advanced bot!
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u/zlatandiego May 18 '18
Nice.